thouse but
not before he had greased and brushed scrupulously his back hair and
brushed and put on his tall hat. While he smoked the brim of his tall
hat and the bowl of his pipe were just visible beyond the jambs of the
outhouse door. His arbour, as he called the reeking outhouse which he
shared with the cat and the garden tools, served him also as a
sounding-box: and every morning he hummed contentedly one of his
favourite songs: O, TWINE ME A BOWER or BLUE EYES AND GOLDEN HAIR or
THE GROVES OF BLARNEY while the grey and blue coils of smoke rose
slowly from his pipe and vanished in the pure air.

During the first part of the summer in Blackrock uncle Charles was
Stephen's constant companion. Uncle Charles was a hale old man with a
well tanned skin, rugged features and white side whiskers. On week days
he did messages between the house in Carysfort Avenue and those shops
in the main street of the town with which the family dealt. Stephen was
glad to go with him on these errands for uncle Charles helped him very
liberally to handfuls of whatever was exposed in open boxes and barrels
outside the counter. He would seize a handful of grapes and sawdust or
three or four American apples and thrust them generously into his
grandnephew's hand while the shopman smiled uneasily; and, on Stephen's
feigning reluctance to take them, he would frown and say:

--Take them, sir. Do you hear me, sir? They're good for your bowels.

When the order list had been booked the two would go on to the park
where an old friend of Stephen's father, Mike Flynn, would be found
seated on a bench, waiting for them. Then would begin Stephen's run
round the park. Mike Flynn would stand at the gate near the railway
station, watch in hand, while Stephen ran round the track in the style
Mike Flynn favoured, his head high lifted, his knees well lifted and
his hands held straight down by his sides. When the morning practice
was over the trainer would make his comments and sometimes illustrate
them by shuffling along for a yard or so comically in an old pair of
blue canvas shoes. A small ring of wonderstruck children and nursemaids
would gather to watch him and linger even when he and uncle Charles had
sat down again and were talking athletics and politics. Though he had
heard his father say that Mike Flynn had put some of the best runners
of modern times through his hands Stephen often glanced at his
trainer's flabby stubble-covered face, as it bent over t