Toffee.

As I was reading pages 13-28 of Mrs. Dalloway, a few things jumped out at me that I thought I'd relate to everyone (because I know you're all waiting with bated breath to hear my opinions). The first thing I noticed was how well Virginia Woolf captures Septimus Warren Smith's insanity; she never comes right out and says, "So, this one bloke named Septimus? Yeah, he's crazy." What she does is she uses a combination of his wife Lucrezia's reactions and feelings about her husband's state, what Lucrezia tells us that his doctor recommends her to do, and Septimus's own thoughts to let us create our own picture of what sort of mental condition Septimus is in. I liked a few things about her portrayal, first of all how random Septimus's thoughts are. On page 22, Septimus is watching the trees:

"Sounds made harmonies with premeditation; the spaces between them were as significant as the sounds. A child cried. Rightly far away a horn sounded. All taken together meant the birth of a new religion--" 'Septimus!' said Rezia. He started violently. People must notice."

Septimus makes all of these observations about how important everything around him is, how it's going to create a new religion, so we know that he's not mentally impaired, but we know something's up. Another way we know that there is something wrong is that Rezia always looks around and says to herself, "People must notice." Towards the beginning of this section, we think, "Notice what?" but it soon becomes clear. 

That brings me to the next point I had, which was how easily and subtly Virginia Woolf can change the subject. On page 15, to continue to talk about Septimus and Rezia, there is a paragraph ["People must notice;...into some park."] which is very "stream of consciousness"-like and flies through about 10 different ideas and gives us just a flash more of information about the Warren Smiths. Woolf also does this on page 20, where people are watching the airplane write letters in the sky. She actually ends up describing three things in a few sentences, and I'll color-code them, because it's funny to see how entangled the ideas are. 

"The aeroplane turned and raced and swooped exactly where it liked, swiftly, freely, like a skater --

'That's an E,' said Mrs. Bletchley -- or a dancer -- 

'It's toffee,' murmered Mr. Bowley -- (and the car went in at the gates and nobody looked at it), and...shutting off the smoke..."

I think it's so...interesting to continue the description of the plane ("or a dancer") after the first quotation, and to pick up the account of the motor car as it finally makes its way into the Palace, and how nobody is looking at it now because they're all looking at the plane. It's just a very clever way of bringing everything to a close.