Where did you try? Boody asked.

-- M'Guinness's.

Body stamped her foot and threw her satchel on the table.

-- Bad cess to her big face! she cried.

Katey went to the range and peered with squinting eyes.

-- What's in the pot? she asked.

-- Shirts, Maggy said.

Boody cried angrily:

-- Crickey, is there nothing for us to eat?

Katey, lifting the kettlelid in a pad of her stained skirt, asked:

-- And what's in this?

A heavy fume gushed in answer.

-- Peasoup, Maggy said.

-- Where did you get it? Katey asked.

-- Sister Mary Patrick, Maggy said.

The lacquey rang his bell.

-- Barang!

Boody sat down at the table and said hungrily:

-- Give us it here!

Maggy poured yellow thick soup from the kettle into a bowl. Katey, sitting opposite Boody, said quietly, as her fingertip lifted to her mouth random crumbs.

-- A good job we have that much. Where's Dilly?

-- Gone to meet father, Maggy said.

Boody, breaking big chunks of bread into the yellow soup, added:

-- Our father who art not in heaven.

Maggy, pouring yellow soup in Katey's bowl, exclaimed:

-- Boody! For shame!

A skiff, a crumpled throwaway, Elijah is coming, rode lightly down the Liffey, under Loopline bridge, shooting the rapids where water chafed around the bridgepiers, sailing eastward past hulls and anchorchains, between the Customhouse old dock and George's quay.