Ulysses Part 64

Maggy at the range rammed down a greyish ma.s.s beneath bubbling suds twice with her potstick and wiped her brow.

--They wouldn't give anything on them, she said.

Father Conmee walked through Clongowes fields, his thinsocked ankles tickled by stubble.

--Where did you try? Boody asked.

--M'Guinness's.

Boody stamped her foot and threw her satchel on the table.

--Bad cess to her big face! she cried.

Katey went to the range and peered with squinting eyes.

--What's in the pot? she asked.

--Shirts, Maggy said.

Boody cried angrily:

--Crickey, is there nothing for us to eat?

Katey, lifting the kettlelid in a pad of her stained skirt, asked:

--And what's in this?

A heavy fume gushed in answer.

--Peasoup, Maggy said.

--Where did you get it? Katey asked.

--Sister Mary Patrick, Maggy said.

The lacquey rang his bell.

--Barang!

Boody sat down at the table and said hungrily:

--Give us it here.

Maggy poured yellow thick soup from the kettle into a bowl. Katey, sitting opposite Boody, said quietly, as her fingertip lifted to her mouth random crumbs:

--A good job we have that much. Where's Dilly?

--Gone to meet father, Maggy said.

Boody, breaking big chunks of bread into the yellow soup, added:

--Our father who art not in heaven.

Maggy, pouring yellow soup in Katey's bowl, exclaimed:

--Boody! For shame!

A skiff, a crumpled throwaway, Elijah is coming, rode lightly down the Liffey, under Loopline bridge, shooting the rapids where water chafed around the bridgepiers, sailing eastward past hulls and anchorchains, between the Customhouse old dock and George's quay.

The blond girl in Thornton's bedded the wicker basket with rustling fibre. Blazes Boylan handed her the bottle swathed in pink tissue paper and a small jar.

--Put these in first, will you? he said.

--Yes, sir, the blond girl said. And the fruit on top.

--That'll do, game ball, Blazes Boylan said.

She bestowed fat pears neatly, head by tail, and among them ripe shamefaced peaches.

Blazes Boylan walked here and there in new tan shoes about the fruitsmelling shop, lifting fruits, young juicy crinkled and plump red tomatoes, sniffing smells.

H. E. L. Y.'S filed before him, tallwhitehatted, past Tangier lane, plodding towards their goal.

He turned suddenly from a chip of strawberries, drew a gold watch from his fob and held it at its chain's length.

--Can you send them by tram? Now?

A darkbacked figure under Merchants' arch scanned books on the hawker's cart.

--Certainly, sir. Is it in the city?

--O, yes, Blazes Boylan said. Ten minutes.

The blond girl handed him a docket and pencil.

--Will you write the address, sir?

Blazes Boylan at the counter wrote and pushed the docket to her.

--Send it at once, will you? he said. It's for an invalid.

--Yes, sir. I will, sir.

Blazes Boylan rattled merry money in his trousers' pocket.

--What's the damage? he asked.