Stephen finished his sleep in a bedroom of the Victoria Hotel. The
bright warm sunlight was streaming through the window and he could hear
the din of traffic. His father was standing before the dressing-table,
examining his hair and face and moustache with great care, craning his
neck across the water-jug and drawing it back sideways to see the better.
While he did so he sang softly to himself with quaint accent and phrasing:


'Tis youth and folly
Makes young men marry,
So here, my love, I'll
No longer stay.
What can't be cured, sure,
Must be injured, sure,
So I'll go to
Amerikay.

My love she's handsome,
My love she's bony:
She's like good whisky
When it is new;
But when 'tis old
And growing cold
It fades and dies like
The mountain dew.


The consciousness of the warm sunny city outside his window and the
tender tremors with which his father's voice festooned the strange sad
happy air, drove off all the mists of the night's ill humour from