Page:Ulysses, 1922.djvu/593

590 very modest remuneration indeed for her pianoplaying. The idea he was strongly inclined to believe, was to do good and net a profit, there being no competition to speak of. Sulphate of copper poison, S O4 or something in some dried peas he remembered reading of in a cheap eatinghouse somewhere but he couldn’t remember when it was or where. Anyhow, inspection, medical inspection, of all eatables, seemed to him more than ever necessary which possibly accounted for the vogue of Dr Tibble’s Vi-Cocoa on account of the medical analysis involved.

Have a shot at it now, he ventured to say of the coffee after being stirred. Thus prevailed on to at any rate taste it, Stephen lifted the heavy mug from the brown puddle it clopped out of it when taken up  by the handle and took a sip of the offending beverage.

Still, it’s solid food, his good genius urged, I’m a stickler for solid food, his one and only reason being not gormandising in the least but regular meals as the sine qua non for any kind of proper work, mental or manual. You ought to eat more solid food. You would feel a different man.

Liquids I can eat, Stephen said. But oblige me by taking away that knife. I can’t look at the point of it. It reminds me of Roman history.

Mr Bloom promptly did as suggested and removed the incriminated article, a blunt hornhandled ordinary knife with nothing particularly Roman or antique about it to the lay eye, observing that the point was the least conspicuous point about it.

Our mutual friend’s stories are like himself, Mr Bloom, apropos of knives, remarked to his confidante sotto voce. Do you think they are genuine? He could spin those yarns for hours on end all night long and lie like old boots. Look at him.

Yet still, though his eyes were thick with sleep and sea air, life was full of a host of things and coincidences of a terrible nature and it was quite within the bounds of possibility that it was not an entire fabrication though at first blush there was not much inherent probability in all the spoof he got off his chest being strictly accurate gospel.

He had been meantime taking stock of the individual in front of him and Sherlockholmesing him up, ever since he clapped eyes on him. Though a wellpreserved man of no little stamina, if a trifle prone to baldness, there was something spurious in the cut of his jib that suggested a jail delivery and it required no violent stretch of imagination to associate such a weirdlooking specimen with the oakum and treadmill fraternity.