Page 728 - ULYSSES

Ulysses

and spread out blobs and on the hills nought but dry flag
and faggots that would catch at first fire. All the world
saying, for aught they knew, the big wind of last February
a year that did havoc the land so pitifully a small thing

beside this barrenness. But by and by, as said, this evening
after sundown, the wind sitting in the west, biggish
swollen clouds to be seen as the night increased and the
weatherwise poring up at them and some sheet lightnings
at first and after, past ten of the clock, one great stroke
with a long thunder and in a brace of shakes all scamper
pellmell within door for the smoking shower, the men
making shelter for their straws with a clout or kerchief,
womenfolk skipping off with kirtles catched up soon as
the pour came. In Ely place, Baggot street, Duke’s lawn,
thence through Merrion green up to Holles street a swash
of water flowing that was before bonedry and not one
chair or coach or fiacre seen about but no more crack after
that first. Over against the Rt. Hon. Mr Justice
Fitzgibbon’s door (that is to sit with Mr Healy the lawyer
upon the college lands) Mal. Mulligan a gentleman’s
gentleman that had but come from Mr Moore’s the
writer’s (that was a papish but is now, folk say, a good
Williamite) chanced against Alec. Bannon in a cut bob
(which are now in with dance cloaks of Kendal green) that

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