down the hill Malachy is supposed to stop it but he’s looking at a pal on roller skates and it speeds by him across the street and through the doors of Leniston’s pub where men are having a peaceful pint and not expect- ing a pram with a dirty-faced child saying Goo goo goo goo.The bar- man shouts this is a disgrace, there must be a law against this class of behavior, babies roaring through the door in bockety prams, he’ll call the guards on us, and Alphie waves at him and smiles and he says, all right, all right, the child can have a sweet and a lemonade, the brothers can have lemonade too, that raggedy pair, and God above, ’tis a hard world, the minute you think you’re getting ahead a pram comes crash- ing through the door and you’re dishing out sweets and lemonade right and left, the two of ye take that child and go home to yeer mother. Malachy has another powerful idea, that we could go around Lim- erick like tinkers pushing Alphie in his pram into pubs for the sweets and lemonade, but I don’t want Mam finding out and hitting me with her right cross. Malachy says I’m not a sport and runs off. I push the pram over to Henry Street and up by the Redemptorist church. It’s a gray day, the church is gray and the small crowd of people outside the door of the priests’ house is gray.They’re waiting to beg for any food left over from the priests’ dinner. There  in  the  middle  of  the  crowd  in  her  dirty  gray  coat  is  my mother. This is my own mother, begging.This is worse than the dole, the St. Vincent de Paul Society, the Dispensary. It’s the worst kind of shame, almost as bad as begging on the streets where the tinkers hold up their scabby children, Give us a penny for the poor child, mister, the poor child is hungry, missus. My  mother  is  a  beggar  now  and  if  anyone  from  the  lane  or  my school  sees her the family will be disgraced entirely. My pals will make up new names and torment me in the schoolyard and I know what they’ll say, Frankie McCourt beggar woman’s boy scabby-eyed dancing blubber-gob Jap 250