She turns and walks with me to the post office on Henry Street. She doesn’t say a word and I wonder if she’s going to the post office to denounce me for sleeping in my grandmother’s bed and wearing her black dress. She says, Go up and tell them your aunt is down here wait- ing for you and you’ll be an hour late. If they want to argue I’ll go up and argue. Why do I have to be an hour late? Do what you’re bloody well told. There are telegram boys sitting on a bench along a wall.There are two women at a desk, one fat, one thin.The thin one says,Yes? My name is Frank McCourt, miss, and I’m here to start work. What kind of work would that be now? Telegram boy, miss. The thin one cackles, Oh, God, I thought you were here to clean the lavatories. No, miss. My mother brought a note from the priest, Dr. Cowpar, and there’s supposed to be a job. Oh, there is, is there? And do you know what day this is? I do, miss. ’Tis my birthday. I’m fourteen. Isn’t that grand, says the fat woman. Today is Thursday, says the thin woman.Your job starts on Monday. Go away and wash yourself and come back then. The telegram boys along the wall are laughing. I don’t know why but I feel my face turning hot. I tell the women,Thank you, and on the way out I hear the thin one, Jesus above, Maureen, who dragged in that specimen? and they laugh along with the telegram boys. Aunt Aggie says,Well? and I tell her I don’t start till Monday. She says my clothes are a disgrace and what did I wash them in. Carbolic soap. They smell like dead pigeons and you’re making a laughingstock of the whole family. She takes me to Roche’s Stores and buys me a shirt, a gansey, a pair of short pants, two pairs of stockings and a pair of summer shoes on sale. She gives me two shillings to have tea and a bun for my birth- day. She gets on the bus to go back up O’Connell Street too fat and lazy to walk. Fat and lazy, no son of her own, and still she buys me the clothes for my new job. I turn toward Arthur’s Quay with the package of new clothes under 310