– It is indeed, ma’am, Buck Mulligan said, pouring milk into their cups.

– Taste it, sir, she said.

He drank at her bidding.

– If we could live on good food like that, he said to her somewhat loudly, we wouldn’t have the country full of rotten teeth and rotten guts. Living in a bogswamp, eating cheap food and the streets paved with dust, horsedung and consumptives’ spits.

– Are you a medical student, sir? the old woman asked.

– I am, ma’am, Buck Mulligan answered.

– Look at that now, she said.

Stephen listened in scornful silence. She bows her old head to a voice that speaks to her loudly, her bonesetter, her medicineman: me she slights. To the voice that will shrive and oil for the grave all there is of her but her woman’s unclean loins, of man’s flesh made not in God’s likeness, the serpent’s prey. And to the loud voice that now bids her be silent with wondering unsteady eyes.

– Do you understand what he says? Stephen asked her.

– Is it French you are talking, sir? the old woman said to Haines.

Haines spoke to her again a longer speech, confidently.

– Irish, Buck Mulligan said. Is there Gaelic on you?

– I thought it was Irish, she said, by the sound of it. Are you from the west, sir?

– I am an Englishman, Haines answered.

– He’s English, Buck Mulligan said, and he thinks we ought to speak Irish in Ireland.

– Sure we ought to, the old woman said, and I’m ashamed I don’t speak the language myself. I’m told it’s a grand language by them that knows.