Mam shakes her head, no. Ah,now,missus,surely you should have a nice egg in your condition. But Mam shakes her head and I wonder how she can say no to a soft-boiled egg when there’s nothing in the world like it. All right, ma’am, says the sergeant’s wife, a bit of toast, then, and something for the children and your poor husband. She goes back to another room and soon there’s tea and bread. Dad drinks his tea but gives us his bread and Mam says,Will you eat your bread, for God’s sake.You won’t be much use to us falling down with the hunger. He shakes his head and asks the sergeant’s wife is there any chance of a cigarette. She brings him the cigarette and tells Mam the guards in the barracks have taken up a collection to pay our train fares to Limerick.There will be a motor car to pick up our trunk and leave us at Kingsbridge Railway Station and,You’ll be in Limerick in three or four hours. Mam puts up her arms and hugs the sergeant’s wife. God bless you and your husband and all the guards, Mam says. I don’t know what we’d do without you.God knows ’tis a lovely thing to be back among our own. ’Tis the least we could do, says the sergeant’s wife.These are lovely children you have and I’m from Cork meself and I know what ’tis to be in Dublin without two pennies to rub together. Dad sits at the other end of the bench, smoking his cigarette, drink- ing his tea. He stays that way till the motor car comes to take us through the streets of Dublin. Dad asks the driver if he’d mind going by way of the G.P.O. and the driver says, Is it a stamp you want or what? No, says Dad. I hear they put up a new statue of Cuchulain to honor the men who died in 1916 and I’d like to show it to my son here who has a great admiration for Cuchulain. The driver says he has no notion of who this Cuchulain was but he wouldn’t mind stopping one bit. He might come in himself and see what the commotion is all about for he hasn’t been in the G.P.O. since he was a boy and the English nearly wrecked it with their big guns fir- ing up from the Liffey River. He says you’ll see the bullet holes all over the front and they should be left there to remind the Irish of English perfidy. I ask the man what’s perfidy and he says ask your father and I would but we’re stopping outside a big building with columns and that’s the G.P.O. Mam stays in the motor car while we follow the driver into the G.P.O.There he is, he says, there’s your man Cuchulain. 55