J. J. O’Molloy strolled to the sloping desk and began to turn back the pink pages of the file.
Practice dwindling. A mighthavebeen. Losing heart. Gambling. Debts of honour. Reaping the whirlwind. Used to get good retainers from D. and T. Fitzgerald. Their wigs to show their grey matter. Brains on their sleeve like the statue in Glasnevin. Believe he does some literary work for the Express with Gabriel Conroy. Wellread fellow. Myles Crawford began on the Independent. Funny the way those newspaper men veer about when they get wind of a new opening. Weathercocks. Hot and cold in the same breath. Wouldn’t know which to believe. One story good till you hear the next. Go for one another baldheaded in the papers and then all blows over. Hailfellow well met the next moment.
—Ah, listen to this for God’ sake, Ned Lambert pleaded. Or again if we but climb the serried mountain peaks…
—Bombast! the professor broke in testily. Enough of the inflated windbag!
—Peaks, Ned Lambert went on, towering high on high, to bathe our souls, as it were…
—Bathe his lips, Mr Dedalus said. Blessed and eternal God! Yes? Is he taking anything for it.
—As ’twere, in the peerless panorama of Ireland’s portfolio, unmatched, despite their wellpraised prototypes in other vaunted prize regions for very beauty, of bosky grove and undulating plain and luscious pastureland of vernal green, steeped in the transcendent translucent glow of our mild mysterious Irish twilight…
HIS NATIVE DORIC
—The moon, professor MacHugh said. He forgot Hamlet.
—That mantles the vista far and wide and wait till the glowing orb of the moon shines forth to irradiate her silver effulgence.
—O! Mr Dedalus cried, giving vent to to a hopeless groan, shite and onions! That’ll do, Ned. Life is too short.
He took off his silk hat and, blowing out impatiently his bushy moustache, welshcombed his hair with raking fingers.
Ned Lambert tossed the newspaper aside, chuckling with delight. An instant after a hoarse bark of laughter burst over professor MacHugh’s unshaven blackspectacled face.
—Doughy Daw! he cried.
