The stout student who stood below them on the steps farted briefly. Dixon turned towards him saying in a soft voice:
—Did an angel speak?
Cranly turned also and said vehemently but without anger:
—Goggins, you’re the flamingest dirty devil I ever met, do you know.—
—I had it on my mind to say that—Goggins answered firmly.—It did no one any harm, did it?—
—We hope—Dixon said suavely—that it was not of the kind known to science as a paulo post futurum.—
—Didn’t I tell you he was a smiler?—said Temple, turning right and left—Didn’t I give him that name?—
—You did. We’re not deaf—said the tall consumptive.
Cranly still frowned at the stout student below him. Then, with a snort of disgust, he shoved him violently down the steps.
—Go away from here—he said rudely.—Go away, you stinkpot. And you are a stinkpot.—
Goggins skipped down on to the gravel and at once returned to his place with good humour. Temple turned back to Stephen and asked:
—Do you believe in the law of heredity?—
—Are you drunk or what are you or what are you trying to say?—asked Cranly, facing round on him with an expression of wonder.
—The most profound sentence ever written—Temple said with enthusiasm—is the sentence at the end of the zoology. Reproduction is the beginning of death.—
He touched Stephen timidly at the elbow and said eagerly:
[271]
