Cast 75. Page 212, line 100.
—There’s your teas, he said.
Miss Kennedy with manners transposed the teatray down to an upturned lithia crate, safe from eyes, low.
—What is it? loud boots unmannerly asked.
—Find out, miss Douce retorted, leaving her spyingpoint.
—Your beau, is it?
A haughty bronze replied:
—I’ll complain to Mrs de Massey on you if I hear any more of your impertinent insolence.
—Imperthnthn thnthnthn, bootssnout sniffed rudely, as he retreated as she threatened as he had come.
This is from Episode 11. The setting is the bar of the Ormond Hotel. Miss Douce, with her bronze hair, and the fair-haired Miss Kennedy are serving behind the counter.
“Boots” is, in British usage, the hotel servant responsible for polishing guests’ boots and doing odd jobs. The dictionary gives this definition:
Boots: The porter or servant in a hotel who blacks the boots of guests and in some cases attends to the baggage. Formerly called a boot-catcher.
Since this is a hotel bar, it makes sense that there would be such a servant. He has brought tea to the barmaids.
“Transpose” means “to move” or “to transfer,” but it also has the musical sense of “to transpose into another key.” Episode 11 is full of musical language, and in this short passage too we get words such as transpose, low, and loud, all of which carry musical overtones.
“Lithia” refers to mineral water from Lithia Springs, Georgia. Bottled lithia water was all the rage from the 1880s through the First World War, though apparently it was not actually natural spring water but ordinary water with lithium bicarbonate added.
Lithia water also appeared in Episode 3, where Stephen recalls something his uncle Richie Goulding said.
—Call me Richie. Damn your lithia water. It lowers. Whusky!
（U32.90）
What exactly is the boots asking about when he says, “What is it?”
One possibility is the rose pinned to Miss Douce’s bosom. Immediately after this passage, the word flower appears. And later it becomes clear that Douce is indeed wearing a rose on her black dress, a rose that will be mentioned repeatedly throughout the chapter.
On her flower frowning miss Douce said:
（U211.133）
—O saints above! miss Douce said, sighed above her jumping rose.
（U214.181）
Another possibility is the shell. There is a shell placed on the bar counter. Kennedy has apparently been to Rostrevor, a seaside resort in Northern Ireland, perhaps with a lover, and later she lets the solicitor George Lidwell hold the shell to his ear and listen to it.
Miss Douce halfstood to see her skin askance in the barmirror gildedlettered where hock and claret glasses shimmered and in their midst a shell.
To the end of the bar to him she bore lightly the spiked and winding seahorn that he, George Lidwell, solicitor, might hear.
If someone says “What’s that?” I rather think it is more likely to be the shell.
“Beau” is French for “beautiful,” but in English it means a lover or boyfriend.
Mrs de Massey appears nowhere else in the novel. She is presumably the woman in charge of employing or supervising the boots.
"Mermaid's Comb" by arbyreed is marked with CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
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