Taking Stephen on one side he had the customary doleful ditty to tell.  Not as much as a farthing to purchase a night’s lodgings.  His friends had all deserted him.  Furthermore he had a row with Lenehan and called him to Stephen a mean bloody swab with a sprinkling of a number of other uncalledfor expressions.  He was out of a job and implored of Stephen to tell him where on God’s earth he could get something, anything at all, to do.  No, it was the daughter of the mother in the washkitchen that was fostersister to the heir of the house or else they were connected through the mother in some way, both occurrences happening at the same time if the whole thing wasn’t a complete fabrication from start to finish.  Anyhow he was all in.

—­I wouldn’t ask you only, pursued he, on my solemn oath and God knows I’m on the rocks.

—­There’ll be a job tomorrow or next day, Stephen told him, in a boys’ school at Dalkey for a gentleman usher.  Mr Garrett Deasy.  Try it.  You may mention my name.

—­Ah, God, Corley replied, sure I couldn’t teach in a school, man.  I was never one of your bright ones, he added with a half laugh.  I got stuck twice in the junior at the christian brothers.

—­I have no place to sleep myself, Stephen informed him.

Corley at the first go-off was inclined to suspect it was something to do with Stephen being fired out of his digs for bringing in a bloody tart off the street.  There was a dosshouse in Marlborough street, Mrs Maloney’s, but it was only a tanner touch and full of undesirables but M’Conachie told him you got a decent enough do in the Brazen Head over in Winetavern street (which was distantly suggestive to the person addressed of friar Bacon) for a bob.  He was starving too though he hadn’t said a word about it.

Though this sort of thing went on every other night or very near it still Stephen’s feelings got the better of him in a sense though he knew that Corley’s brandnew rigmarole on a par with the others was hardly deserving of much credence.  However HAUD IGNARUS MALORUM MISERIS SUCCURRERE Disco etcetera as the Latin poet remarks especially as luck would have it he got paid his screw after every middle of the month on the sixteenth which was the date of the month as a matter of fact though a good bit of the wherewithal was demolished.  But the cream of the joke was nothing would get it out of Corley’s head that he was living in affluence and hadn’t a thing to do but hand out the needful.  Whereas.  He put his hand in a pocket anyhow not with the idea of finding any food there but thinking he might lend him anything up to a bob or so in lieu so that he might endeavour at all events and get sufficient to eat but the result was in the negative for, to his chagrin, he found his cash missing.  A few broken biscuits were all the result of his investigation.  He tried his hardest to recollect for the moment whether he had lost as well he might have or left because in that contingency it was not a pleasant lookout, very much the reverse in fact.  He was altogether too fagged out to institute a thorough search though he tried to recollect.  About biscuits he dimly remembered.  Who now exactly gave them he wondered or where was or did he buy.  However in another pocket he came across what he surmised in the dark were pennies, erroneously however, as it turned out.