Page 80 - a-portrait-of-the-artist-as-a-young-man

mortifying flavour in secret.
He was sitting on the backless chair in his aunt’s kitchen.
A lamp with a reflector hung on the japanned wall of the
fireplace and by its light his aunt was reading the evening
paper that lay on her knees. She looked a long time at a smil-
ing picture that was set in it and said musingly:
—The beautiful Mabel Hunter!
A ringletted girl stood on tiptoe to peer at the picture
and said softly:
—What is she in, mud?
—In a pantomime, love.
The child leaned her ringletted head against her mother’s
sleeve, gazing on the picture, and murmured as if fascinat-
ed:
—The beautiful Mabel Hunter!
As if fascinated, her eyes rested long upon those demure-
ly taunting eyes and she murmured devotedly:
—Isn’t she an exquisite creature?
And the boy who came in from the street, stamping
crookedly under his stone of coal, heard her words. He
dropped his load promptly on the floor and hurried to her
side to see. He mauled the edges of the paper with his red-
dened and blackened hands, shouldering her aside and
complaining that he could not see.
He was sitting in the narrow breakfast room high up in
the old dark-windowed house. The firelight flickered on the
wall and beyond the window a spectral dusk was gathering
upon the river. Before the fire an old woman was busy mak-
ing tea and, as she bustled at the task, she told in a low voice

80 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man