then.  Molly had that elephantgrey dress with the braided frogs.  Mantailored with selfcovered buttons.  She didn’t like it because I sprained my ankle first day she wore choir picnic at the Sugarloaf.  As if that.  Old Goodwin’s tall hat done up with some sticky stuff.  Flies’ picnic too.  Never put a dress on her back like it.  Fitted her like a glove, shoulders and hips.  Just beginning to plump it out well.  Rabbitpie we had that day.  People looking after her.

Happy.  Happier then.  Snug little room that was with the red wallpaper.  Dockrell’s, one and ninepence a dozen.  Milly’s tubbing night.  American soap I bought:  elderflower.  Cosy smell of her bathwater.  Funny she looked soaped all over.  Shapely too.  Now photography.  Poor papa’s daguerreotype atelier he told me of.  Hereditary taste.

He walked along the curbstone.

Stream of life.  What was the name of that priestylooking chap was always squinting in when he passed?  Weak eyes, woman.  Stopped in Citron’s saint Kevin’s parade.  Pen something.  Pendennis?  My memory is getting.  Pen ...?  Of course it’s years ago.  Noise of the trams probably.  Well, if he couldn’t remember the dayfather’s name that he sees every day.

Bartell d’Arcy was the tenor, just coming out then.  Seeing her home after practice.  Conceited fellow with his waxedup moustache.  Gave her that song winds that blow from the south.

Windy night that was I went to fetch her there was that lodge meeting on about those lottery tickets after Goodwin’s concert in the supperroom or oakroom of the Mansion house.  He and I behind.  Sheet of her music blew out of my hand against the High school railings.  Lucky it didn’t.  Thing like that spoils the effect of a night for her.  Professor Goodwin linking her in front.  Shaky on his pins, poor old sot.  His farewell concerts.  Positively last appearance on any stage.  May be for months and may be for never.  Remember her laughing at the wind, her blizzard collar up.  Corner of Harcourt road remember that gust.  Brrfoo!  Blew up all her skirts and her boa nearly smothered old Goodwin.  She did get flushed in the wind.  Remember when we got home raking up the fire and frying up those pieces of lap of mutton for her supper with the Chutney sauce she liked.  And the mulled rum.  Could see her in the bedroom from the hearth unclamping the busk of her stays:  white.

Swish and soft flop her stays made on the bed.  Always warm from her.  Always liked to let her self out.  Sitting there after till near two taking out her hairpins.  Milly tucked up in beddyhouse.  Happy.  Happy.  That was the night ...

—­O, Mr Bloom, how do you do?

—­O, how do you do, Mrs Breen?

—­No use complaining.  How is Molly those times?  Haven’t seen her for ages.

—­In the pink, Mr Bloom said gaily.  Milly has a position down in
Mullingar, you know.