Ulysses
strained in nettight frocks, pretty two ounce petticoats and
fringes and things stamped, of course, with my houseflag,
creations of lovely lingerie for Alice and nice scent for Alice.
Alice will feel the pullpull. Martha and Mary will be a little
chilly at first in such delicate thighcasing but the frilly flim-
siness of lace round your bare knees will remind you ...
BLOOM: (A charming soubrette with dauby cheeks, mus-
tard hair and large male hands and nose, leering mouth) I
tried her things on only twice, a small prank, in Holles street.
When we were hard up I washed them to save the laundry
bill. My own shirts I turned. It was the purest thrift.
BELLO: (Jeers) Little jobs that make mother pleased, eh?
And showed off coquettishly in your domino at the mir-
ror behind closedrawn blinds your unskirted thighs and
hegoat’s udders in various poses of surrender, eh? Ho! ho!
I have to laugh! That secondhand black operatop shift and
short trunkleg naughties all split up the stitches at her last
rape that Mrs Miriam Dandrade sold you from the Shel-
bourne hotel, eh?
BLOOM: Miriam. Black. Demimondaine.
BELLO: (Guffaws) Christ Almighty it’s too tickling, this!
You were a nicelooking Miriam when you clipped off your
backgate hairs and lay swooning in the thing across the bed
as Mrs Dandrade about to be violated by lieutenant Smythe-
Smythe, Mr Philip Augustus Blockwell M. P., signor Laci
Daremo, the robust tenor, blueeyed Bert, the liftboy, Henri
Fleury of Gordon Bennett fame, Sheridan, the quadroon
Croesus, the varsity wetbob eight from old Trinity, Ponto,
her splendid Newfoundland and Bobs, dowager duchess