Page 62 - a-portrait-of-the-artist-as-a-young-man

—You really broke your glasses by accident, didn’t you?
Nasty Roche asked.
Stephen felt his heart filled by Fleming’s words and did
not answer.
—Of course he did! said Fleming. I wouldn’t stand it. I’d
go up and tell the rector on him.
—Yes, said Cecil Thunder eagerly, and I saw him lift
the pandy-bat over his shoulder and he’s not allowed to do
that.
—Did they hurt you much? Nasty Roche asked.
—Very much, Stephen said.
—I wouldn’t stand it, Fleming repeated, from Baldyhead
or any other Baldyhead. It’s a stinking mean low trick, that’s
what it is. I’d go straight up to the rector and tell him about
it after dinner.
—Yes, do. Yes, do, said Cecil Thunder.
—Yes, do. Yes, go up and tell the rector on him, Dedalus,
said Nasty Roche, because he said that he’d come in tomor-
row again and pandy you.
—Yes, yes. Tell the rector, all said.
And there were some fellows out of second of grammar
listening and one of them said:
—The senate and the Roman people declared that Ded-
alus had been wrongly punished.
It was wrong; it was unfair and cruel; and, as he sat in the
refectory, he suffered time after time in memory the same
humiliation until he began to wonder whether it might not
really be that there was something in his face which made
him look like a schemer and he wished he had a little mirror

62 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man