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for, to his chagrin, he found his cash missing. A few bro-
ken biscuits were all the result of his investigation. He tried
his hardest to recollect for the moment whether he had lost
as well he might have or left because in that contingency it
was not a pleasant lookout, very much the reverse in fact.
He was altogether too fagged out to institute a thorough
search though he tried to recollect. About biscuits he dim-
ly remembered. Who now exactly gave them he wondered
or where was or did he buy. However in another pocket he
came across what he surmised in the dark were pennies, er-
roneously however, as it turned out.
—Those are halfcrowns, man, Corley corrected him.
And so in point of fact they turned out to be. Stephen
anyhow lent him one of them.
—Thanks, Corley answered, you’re a gentleman. I’ll pay
you back one time. Who’s that with you? I saw him a few
times in the Bleeding Horse in Camden street with Boylan,
the billsticker. You might put in a good word for us to get
me taken on there. I’d carry a sandwichboard only the girl
in the office told me they’re full up for the next three weeks,
man. God, you’ve to book ahead, man, you’d think it was
for the Carl Rosa. I don’t give a shite anyway so long as I get
a job, even as a crossing sweeper.
Subsequently being not quite so down in the mouth after
the two and six he got he informed Stephen about a fellow by
the name of Bags Comisky that he said Stephen knew well
out of Fullam’s, the shipchandler’s, bookkeeper there that
used to be often round in Nagle’s back with O’Mara and a
little chap with a stutter the name of Tighe. Anyhow he was