Page 239 - a-portrait-of-the-artist-as-a-young-man

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 Ste-
phen:
—Are we likely to be asked questions on applied sci-
ence?
The professor began to juggle gravely with the terms pure
science and applied science. A heavy-built student, wearing
gold spectacles, stared with some wonder at the questioner.
Moynihan murmured from behind in his natural voice:
—Isn’t MacAlister a devil for his pound of flesh?
Stephen looked coldly on the oblong skull beneath him
overgrown with tangled twine-coloured hair. The voice, the
accent, the mind of the questioner offended him and he al-
lowed the offence to carry him towards wilful unkindness,
bidding his mind think that the student’s father would have
done better had he sent his son to Belfast to study and have
saved something on the train fare by so doing.
The oblong skull beneath did not turn to meet this shaft
of thought and yet the shaft came back to its bowstring; for
he saw in a moment the student’s whey-pale face.

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