Didn’t look back when she was going down the strand.  Wouldn’t give that satisfaction.  Those girls, those girls, those lovely seaside girls.  Fine eyes she had, clear.  It’s the white of the eye brings that out not so much the pupil.  Did she know what I?  Course.  Like a cat sitting beyond a dog’s jump.  Women never meet one like that Wilkins in the high school drawing a picture of Venus with all his belongings on show.  Call that innocence?  Poor idiot!  His wife has her work cut out for her.  Never see them sit on a bench marked wet paint.  Eyes all over them.  Look under the bed for what’s not there.  Longing to get the fright of their lives.  Sharp as needles they are.  When I said to Molly the man at the corner of Cuffe street was goodlooking, thought she might like, twigged at once he had a false arm.  Had, too.  Where do they get that?  Typist going up Roger Greene’s stairs two at a time to show her understandings.  Handed down from father to, mother to daughter, I mean.  Bred in the bone.  Milly for example drying her handkerchief on the mirror to save the ironing.  Best place for an ad to catch a woman’s eye on a mirror.  And when I sent her for Molly’s Paisley shawl to Prescott’s by the way that ad I must, carrying home the change in her stocking!  Clever little minx.  I never told her.  Neat way she carries parcels too.  Attract men, small thing like that.  Holding up her hand, shaking it, to let the blood flow back when it was red.  Who did you learn that from?  Nobody.  Something the nurse taught me.  O, don’t they know!  Three years old she was in front of Molly’s dressingtable, just before we left Lombard street west.  Me have a nice pace.  Mullingar.  Who knows?  Ways of the world.  Young student.  Straight on her pins anyway not like the other.  Still she was game.  Lord, I am wet.  Devil you are.  Swell of her calf.  Transparent stockings, stretched to breaking point.  Not like that frump today.  A. E. Rumpled stockings.  Or the one in Grafton street.  White.  Wow!  Beef to the heel.

A monkey puzzle rocket burst, spluttering in darting crackles.  Zrads and zrads, zrads, zrads.  And Cissy and Tommy and Jacky ran out to see and Edy after with the pushcar and then Gerty beyond the curve of the rocks.  Will she?  Watch!  Watch!  See!  Looked round.  She smelt an onion.  Darling, I saw, your.  I saw all.

Lord!

Did me good all the same.  Off colour after Kiernan’s, Dignam’s.  For this relief much thanks.  In hamlet, that is.  Lord!  It was all things combined.  Excitement.  When she leaned back, felt an ache at the butt of my tongue.  Your head it simply swirls.  He’s right.  Might have made a worse fool of myself however.  Instead of talking about nothing.  Then I will tell you all.  Still it was a kind of language between us.  It couldn’t be?  No, Gerty they called her.  Might be false name however like my name and the address Dolphin’s barn a blind.

    Her maiden name was JEMINA brown
    and she lived with her mother in Irishtown.