Free eBooks at Planet eBook.com
Stephen, patently crosstempered, repeated and shoved
aside his mug of coffee or whatever you like to call it none
too politely, adding: 1170
—We can’t change the country. Let us change the sub-
ject.
At this pertinent suggestion Mr Bloom, to change the
subject, looked down but in a quandary, as he couldn’t tell
exactly what construction to put on belongs to which sound-
ed rather a far cry. The rebuke of some kind was clearer than
the other part. Needless to say the fumes of his recent orgy
spoke then with some asperity in a curious bitter way for-
eign to his sober state. Probably the homelife to which Mr
B attached the utmost importance had not been all that was
needful or he hadn’t been familiarised with the right sort of
people. With a touch of fear for the young man beside him
whom he furtively scrutinised with an air of some conster-
nation remembering he had just come back from Paris, the
eyes more especially reminding him forcibly of father and
sister, failing to throw much light on the subject, however,
he brought to mind instances of cultured fellows that prom-
ised so brilliantly nipped in the bud of premature decay and
nobody to blame but themselves. For instance there was the
case of O’Callaghan, for one, the halfcrazy faddist, respect-
ably connected though of inadequate means, with his mad
vagaries among whose other gay doings when rotto and
making himself a nuisance to everybody all round he was in
the habit of ostentatiously sporting in public a suit of brown
paper (a fact). And then the usual denouement after the fun
had gone on fast and furious he got 1190 landed into hot