st the job. Get up! Last day!
Then every fellow mousing around for his liver and his lights and the
rest of his traps. Find damn all of himself that morning. Pennyweight of
powder in a skull. Twelve grammes one pennyweight. Troy measure.

Corny Kelleher fell into step at their side.

--Everything went off A1, he said. What?

He looked on them from his drawling eye. Policeman's shoulders. With
your tooraloom tooraloom.

--As it should be, Mr Kernan said.

--What? Eh? Corny Kelleher said.

Mr Kernan assured him.

--Who is that chap behind with Tom Kernan? John Henry Menton asked. I
know his face.

Ned Lambert glanced back.

--Bloom, he said, Madame Marion Tweedy that was, is, I mean, the
soprano. She's his wife.

--O, to be sure, John Henry Menton said. I haven't seen her for some
time. He was a finelooking woman. I danced with her, wait, fifteen
seventeen golden years ago, at Mat Dillon's in Roundtown. And a good
armful she was.

He looked behind through the others.

--What is he? he asked. What does he do? Wasn't he in the stationery
line? I fell foul of him one evening, I remember, at bowls.

Ned Lambert smiled.

--Yes, he was, he said, in Wisdom Hely's. A traveller for blottingpaper.

--In God's name, John Henry Menton said, what did she marry a coon like
that for? She had plenty of game in her then.

--Has still, Ned Lambert said. He does some canvassing for ads.

John Henry Menton's large eyes stared ahead.

The barrow turned into a side lane. A portly man, ambushed among the
grasses, raised his hat in homage. The gravediggers touched their caps.

--John O'Connell, Mr Power said pleased. He never forgets a friend.

Mr O'Connell shook all their hands in silence. Mr Dedalus said:

--I am come to pay you another visit.

--My dear Simon, the caretaker answered in a low voice. I don't want
your custom at all.

Saluting Ned Lambert and John Henry Menton he walked on at Martin
Cunningham's side puzzling two long keys at his back.

--Did you hear that one, he asked them, about Mulcahy from the Coombe?

--I did not, Martin Cunningham said.

They bent their silk hats in concert and Hynes inclined his ear. The
caretaker hung his thumbs in the loops of his gold watchchain and spoke
in a discreet tone to their vacant smiles.

--They tell the story, he said, that two drunks came out here one foggy
evening to look for the grave of a friend of theirs. They asked for
Mulcahy from the Coombe and wer