Angelus at six and tells us he asked Mrs. O’Connell at the post office if they  had  anything  for  McCourt  all  day  and  they  didn’t. Mam  turns toward the dead ashes in the fire and sucks at the last bit of goodness in the Woodbine butt caught between the brown thumb and the burnt middle finger. Michael who is only five and won’t understand anything till he’s eleven like me wants to know if we’re having fish and chips tonight because he’s hungry. Mam says, Next week, love, and he goes back out to play in the lane. You don’t know what to do with yourself when the first telegram doesn’t come.You can’t stay out in the lane playing with your brothers all night because everyone else is gone in and you’d be ashamed to stay out in the lane to be tormented with smells of sausages and rashers and fried bread.You don’t want to look at electric light coming through the windows after dark and you don’t want to hear the news from the BBC or Radio Eireann from other people’s wirelesses. Mrs. Meagher and her children are gone in and there’s only the dim light of a candle from their kitchen.They’re ashamed too.They stay inside on Saturday nights and they don’t even go to Mass on Sunday mornings. Bridey Hannon told Mam that Mrs. Meagher is in a constant state of shame over the rags they wear and so desperate she goes down to the Dispensary for the public assistance. Mam says that’s the worst thing that could happen to any family. It’s worse than going on the dole, it’s worse than going to the St.Vincent de Paul Society, it’s worse than begging on the streets with  the tinkers and the knackers. It’s the last thing you’d do to keep yourself out of the poor house and the children from the orphanage. There’s a sore at the top of my nose between my eyebrows, gray and red and itching. Grandma says, Don’t touch that sore and don’t put water near it or it’ll spread. If you broke your arm she’d say don’t touch that with water it’ll spread.The sore spreads into my eyes anyway and now they’re red and yellow from the stuff that oozes and makes them stick in the morning.They stick so hard I have to force my eyelids open with my fingers and Mam has to scrub off that yellow stuff with a damp rag and boric powder.The eyelashes fall off and every bit of dust in Limer- ick blows into my eyes on windy days. Grandma tells me I have naked eyes and she says it’s my own fault, all that eye trouble comes from sit- ting up there at the top of the lane under the light pole in all kinds of weather with my nose stuck in books and the same thing will happen 224