“But he never wore a collar”

Here’s the man who’s helping to move the family.

Katherine Mansfield, “Prelude” (1918).

I can imagine these sentences in one of the early stories of Joyce’s Dubliners. It’s the plainness, and the free indirect discourse, presenting this man as seen by a child. The alogical but really does the trick.

Also from Katherine Mansfield
“Tortoiseshell cats and champagne” : A hair-tidy and pencil rays