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rotten with money, that d only be too glad....
You wait a while my boy. See if I don t play my
cards properly. When I go about a thing I mean
business, I tell you. You just wait.
He tossed his glass to his mouth, finished
his drink and laughed loudly. Then he looked
thoughtfully before him and said in a calmer
tone:
 But I m in no hurry. They can wait. I don t
fancy tying myself up to one woman, you know.
He imitated with his mouth the act of tasting
and made a wry face.
 Must get a bit stale, I should think, he
said.
Little Chandler sat in the room off the hall,
holding a child in his arms. To save money
they kept no servant but Annie s young sister
170 Dubliners (Signet Classics)
Monica came for an hour or so in the morn-
ing and an hour or so in the evening to help.
But Monica had gone home long ago. It was a
quarter to nine. Little Chandler had come home
late for tea and, moreover, he had forgotten to
bring Annie home the parcel of coffee from Be-
wley s. Of course she was in a bad humour and
gave him short answers. She said she would do
without any tea but when it came near the time
at which the shop at the corner closed she de-
cided to go out herself for a quarter of a pound
of tea and two pounds of sugar. She put the
sleeping child deftly in his arms and said:
 Here. Don t waken him.
A little lamp with a white china shade stood
upon the table and its light fell over a photo-
graph which was enclosed in a frame of crum-
pled horn. It was Annie s photograph. Little
Chandler looked at it, pausing at the thin tight
http://booksiread.org 171
lips. She wore the pale blue summer blouse
which he had brought her home as a present
one Saturday. It had cost him ten and eleven-
pence; but what an agony of nervousness it had
cost him! How he had suffered that day, wait-
ing at the shop door until the shop was empty,
standing at the counter and trying to appear
at his ease while the girl piled ladies blouses
before him, paying at the desk and forgetting
to take up the odd penny of his change, being
called back by the cashier, and finally, striving
to hide his blushes as he left the shop by ex-
amining the parcel to see if it was securely tied.
When he brought the blouse home Annie kissed
him and said it was very pretty and stylish; but
when she heard the price she threw the blouse
on the table and said it was a regular swindle to
charge ten and elevenpence for it. At first she
wanted to take it back but when she tried it on
172 Dubliners (Signet Classics)
she was delighted with it, especially with the
make of the sleeves, and kissed him and said
he was very good to think of her.
Hm!...
He looked coldly into the eyes of the photo-
graph and they answered coldly. Certainly they
were pretty and the face itself was pretty. But
he found something mean in it. Why was it
so unconscious and ladylike? The composure
of the eyes irritated him. They repelled him
and defied him: there was no passion in them,
no rapture. He thought of what Gallaher had
said about rich Jewesses. Those dark Oriental
eyes, he thought, how full they are of passion,
of voluptuous longing!... Why had he married
the eyes in the photograph?
He caught himself up at the question and
glanced nervously round the room. He found
something mean in the pretty furniture which
http://booksiread.org 173
he had bought for his house on the hire system.
Annie had chosen it herself and it reminded hi
of her. It too was prim and pretty. A dull resent-
ment against his life awoke within him. Could
he not escape from his little house? Was it too
late for him to try to live bravely like Gallaher?
Could he go to London? There was the furni-
ture still to be paid for. If he could only write a
book and get it published, that might open the
way for him.
A volume of Byron s poems lay before him on
the table. He opened it cautiously with his left
hand lest he should waken the child and began
to read the first poem in the book:
Hushed are the winds and still the evening
gloom,
Not e en a Zephyr wanders through the grove,
Whilst I return to view my Margaret s tomb
And scatter flowers on tbe dust I love.
174 Dubliners (Signet Classics)
He paused. He felt the rhythm of the verse
about him in the room. How melancholy it was!
Could he, too, write like that, express the melan-
choly of his soul in verse? There were so many
things he wanted to describe: his sensation of a
few hours before on Grattan Bridge, for exam-
ple. If he could get back again into that mood....
The child awoke and began to cry. He turned
from the page and tried to hush it: but it would
not be hushed. He began to rock it to and fro
in his arms but its wailing cry grew keener. He
rocked it faster while his eyes began to read the
second stanza:
Within this narrow cell reclines her clay,
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