Page:A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (Huebsch 1916).djvu/233

 some rough usage, whispering two and two behind their hands.

The professor had gone to the glass cases on the side-wall, from a shelf of which he took down a set of coils, blew away the dust from many points and, bearing it carefully to the table, held a finger on it while he proceeded with his lecture. He explained that the wires in modern coils were of a compound called platinoid lately discovered by F. W. Martino.

He spoke clearly the initials and surname of the discoverer. Moynihan whispered from behind:

—Good old Fresh Water Martin!—

—Ask him—Stephen whispered back with weary humour—if he wants a subject for electrocution. He can have me.—

Moynihan, seeing the professor bend over the coils, rose in his bench and, clacking noiselessly the fingers of his right hand, began to call with the voice of a slobbering urchin:—Please teacher! This boy is after saying a bad word, teacher.—

—Platinoid—the professor said solemnly—is preferred to German silver because it has a lower coefficient of resistance by changes of temperature. The platinoid wire is insulated and the covering of silk that insulates it is wound on the ebonite bobbins just where my finger is. If it were wound single an extra current would be induced in the coils. The bobbins are saturated in hot paraffin wax…—

A sharp Ulster voice said from the bench below Stephen:

—Are we likely to be asked questions on applied science?—

The professor began to juggle gravely with the terms