—­For England ...

Two barefoot urchins, sucking long liquorice laces, halted near him, gaping at his stump with their yellowslobbered mouths.

He swung himself forward in vigorous jerks, halted, lifted his head towards a window and bayed deeply: 

—­Home and beauty.

The gay sweet chirping whistling within went on a bar or two, ceased.  The blind of the window was drawn aside.  A card unfurnished apartments slipped from the sash and fell.  A plump bare generous arm shone, was seen, held forth from a white petticoatbodice and taut shiftstraps.  A woman’s hand flung forth a coin over the area railings.  It fell on the path.

One of the urchins ran to it, picked it up and dropped it into the minstrel’s cap, saying: 

—­There, sir.

* * * * *

Katey and Boody Dedalus shoved in the door of the closesteaming kitchen.

—­Did you put in the books?  Boody asked.

Maggy at the range rammed down a greyish mass 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.