-Before he was killed, you mean.

Mr Casey opened his eyes, sighed and went on:

-It was down in Arklow one day. We were down there at a meeting and after the meeting was over we had to make our way to the railway station through the crowd. Such booing and baaing, man, you never heard. They called us all the names in the world. Well there was one old lady, and a drunken old harridan she was surely, that paid all her attention to me. She kept dancing along beside me in the mud bawling and screaming into my face: Priesthunter! The Paris Funds! Mr Fox! Kitty O’Shea!

-And what did you do, John? asked Mr Dedalus.

-I let her bawl away, said Mr Casey. It was a cold day and to keep up my heart I had (saving your presence, ma’am) a quid of Tullamore in my mouth and sure I couldn’t say a word in any case because my mouth was full of tobacco juice.

-Well, John?

-Well. I let her bawl away, to her heart’s content, Kitty O’Shea and the rest of it till at last she called that lady a name that I won’t sully this Christmas board nor your ears, ma’am, nor my own lips by repeating.

He paused. Mr Dedalus, lifting his head from the bone, asked:

-And what did you do, John?

-Do! said Mr Casey. She stuck her ugly old face up at me when she said it and I had my mouth full of tobacco juice. I bent down to her and Phth! says I to her like that.

He turned aside and made the act of spitting.

-Phth! says I to her like that, right into her eye.

He clapped a hand to his eye and gave a hoarse scream of pain.

-O Jesus, Mary and Joseph! says she. I’m blinded! I’m blinded and drownded!

He stopped in a fit of coughing and laughter, repeating:

-I’m blinded entirely.

Mr Dedalus laughed loudly and lay back in his chair while uncle Charles swayed his head to and fro.

Dante looked terribly angry and repeated while they laughed:

-Very nice! Ha! Very nice!

It was not nice about the spit in the woman’s eye. But what was the name the woman had called Kitty O’Shea that Mr Casey would not repeat? He thought of Mr Casey walking through the crowds of people and making speeches from a wagonette. That was what he had been in prison for and he remembered that one night Sergeant O’Neill had come to the house and had stood in the hall, talking in a low voice with his father and chewing nervously at the chinstrap of his cap. And that night Mr Casey had not gone to Dublin by train but a car had come to the door and he had heard his father say something about the Cabinteely road.

He was for Ireland and Parnell and so was his father: and so was Dante too for one night at the band on the esplanade she had hit a