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of the age of 5 and reluctant to give his hand in salutation.
The second in the coffeeroom of Breslin’s hotel on a rainy
Sunday in the January of 1892, in the company of Stephen’s
father and Stephen’s granduncle, Stephen being then 5 years
older.
Did Bloom accept the invitation to dinner given then by
the son and afterwards seconded by the father?
Very gratefully, with grateful appreciation, with sincere
appreciative gratitude, in appreciatively grateful sincerity of
regret, he declined.
Did their conversation on the subject of these reminis-
cences reveal a third connecting link between them?
Mrs Riordan (Dante), a widow of independent means,
had resided in the house of Stephen’s parents from 1 Sep-
tember 1888 to 29 December 1891 and had also resided
during the years 1892, 1893 and 1894 in the City Arms Ho-
tel owned by Elizabeth O’Dowd of 54 Prussia street where,
during parts of the years 1893 and 1894, she had been a
constant informant of Bloom who resided also in the same
hotel, being at that time a clerk in the employment of Joseph
Cuffe of 5 Smithfield for the superintendence of sales in the
adjacent Dublin Cattle market on the North Circular road.
Had he performed any special corporal work of mercy
for her?
He had sometimes propelled her on warm summer eve-
nings, an infirm widow of independent, if limited, means,
in her convalescent bathchair with slow revolutions of its
wheels as far as the corner of the North Circular road op-
posite Mr Gavin Low’s place of business where she had