Quotation from: Ulysses

Written by: James Joyce


Gerty was dressed simply but with the instinctive taste of a votary of
Dame Fashion for she felt that there was just a might that he might be
out. A neat blouse of electric blue selftinted by dolly dyes (because it
was expected in the LADY'S PICTORIAL that electric blue would be worn)
with a smart vee opening down to the division and kerchief pocket
(in which she always kept a piece of cottonwool scented with her
favourite perfume because the handkerchief spoiled the sit) and a
navy threequarter skirt cut to the stride showed off her slim graceful
figure to perfection. She wore a coquettish little love of a hat of
wideleaved nigger straw contrast trimmed with an underbrim of eggblue
chenille and at the side a butterfly bow of silk to tone. All Tuesday
week afternoon she was hunting to match that chenille but at last
she found what she wanted at Clery's summer sales, the very it, slightly
shopsoiled but you would never notice, seven fingers two and a penny. She
did it up all by herself and what joy was hers when she tried it on then,
smiling at the lovely reflection which the mirror gave back to her!
And when she put it on the waterjug to keep the shape she knew that that
would take the shine out of some people she knew. Her shoes were the
newest thing in footwear (Edy Boardman prided herself that she was very
PETITE but she never had a foot like Gerty MacDowell, a five, and never
would ash, oak or elm) with patent toecaps and just one smart buckle over
her higharched instep. Her wellturned ankle displayed its perfect
proportions beneath her skirt and just the proper amount and no more of
her shapely limbs encased in finespun hose with highspliced heels and wide
garter tops. As for undies they were Gerty's chief care and who that knows
the fluttering hopes and fears of sweet seventeen (though Gerty would
never see seventeen again) can find it in his heart to blame her? She had
four dinky sets with awfully pretty stitchery, three garments and
nighties extra, and each set slotted with different coloured ribbons,
rosepink, pale blue, mauve and peagreen, and she aired them herself
and blued them when they came home from the wash and ironed them
and she had a brickbat to keep the iron on because she wouldn't trust
those washerwomen as far as she'd see them scorching the things.
She was wearing the blue for luck, hoping against hope, her own
colour and lucky too for a bride to have a bit of blue somewhere
on her because the green she wore that day week brought grief because
his father brought him in to study for the intermediate exhibition
and because she thought perhaps he might be out because when she was
dressing that morning she nearly slipped up the old pair on her inside out
and that was for luck and lovers' meeting if you put those things on
inside out or if they got untied that he was thinking about you so long
as it wasn't of a Friday.

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