—­Did it hurt much doing it? one asked the sailor.

That worthy, however, was busily engaged in collecting round the.  Someway in his.  Squeezing or.

—­See here, he said, showing Antonio.  There he is cursing the mate.  And there he is now, he added, the same fellow, pulling the skin with his fingers, some special knack evidently, and he laughing at a yarn.

And in point of fact the young man named Antonio’s livid face did actually look like forced smiling and the curious effect excited the unreserved admiration of everybody including Skin-the-Goat, who this time stretched over.

—­Ay, ay, sighed the sailor, looking down on his manly chest.  He’s gone too.  Ate by sharks after.  Ay, ay.

He let go of the skin so that the profile resumed the normal expression of before.

—­Neat bit of work, one longshoreman said.

—­And what’s the number for? loafer number two queried.

—­Eaten alive? a third asked the sailor.

—­Ay, ay, sighed again the latter personage, more cheerily this time with some sort of a half smile for a brief duration only in the direction of the questioner about the number.  Ate.  A Greek he was.

And then he added with rather gallowsbird humour considering his alleged end: 

    —­As bad as old Antonio,
    for he left me on my ownio.

The face of a streetwalker glazed and haggard under a black straw hat peered askew round the door of the shelter palpably reconnoitring on her own with the object of bringing more grist to her mill.  Mr Bloom, scarcely knowing which way to look, turned away on the moment flusterfied but outwardly calm, and, picking up from the table the pink sheet of the Abbey street organ which the jarvey, if such he was, had laid aside, he picked it up and looked at the pink of the paper though why pink.  His reason for so doing was he recognised on the moment round the door the same face he had caught a fleeting glimpse of that afternoon on Ormond quay, the partially idiotic female, namely, of the lane who knew the lady in the brown costume does be with you (Mrs B.) and begged the chance of his washing.  Also why washing which seemed rather vague than not, your washing.  Still candour compelled him to admit he had washed his wife’s undergarments when soiled in Holles street and women would and did too a man’s similar garments initialled with Bewley and Draper’s marking ink (hers were, that is) if they really loved him, that is to say, love me, love my dirty shirt.  Still just then, being on tenterhooks, he desired the female’s room more than her company so it came as a genuine relief when the keeper made her a rude sign to take herself off.  Round the side of the Evening Telegraph he just caught a fleeting glimpse of her face round the side of the door with a kind of demented glassy grin showing that she was not exactly all there, viewing with evident amusement the group of gazers round skipper Murphy’s nautical chest and then there was no more of her.