I will, Uncle Pa. Mr. Hannon  buys  me  a  lemonade, gives  me  the  shilling  for  my morning’s work and tells me I can go home now, I’m a great worker and I can help him again next week after school. On the way home I see myself in the glass of a shop window all black from the coal, and I feel like a man, a man with a shilling in his pocket, a man who had a lemonade in a pub with two coal men and a lime man. I’m not a child anymore and I could easily leave Leamy’s School forever. I could work with Mr. Hannon every day and when his legs got too bad I could take over the float and deliver coal to the rich people the rest of my life and my mother wouldn’t have to be a beggar at the Redemptorist priests’ house. People on the streets and lanes give me curious looks.Boys and girls laugh and call out, Here’s the chimney sweep. How much do you want for  cleaning  our  chimney?  Did  you  fall  into  a  coal  hole? Were  you burned by the darkness? They’re ignorant.They don’t know I spent the day delivering hun- dredweights of coal and turf.They don’t know I’m a man. Mam is sleeping up in Italy with Alphie and there’s a coat over the window to keep the room dark. I tell her I earned a shilling and she says I can go to the Lyric, I deserve it.Take tuppence and leave the rest of the shilling on the mantelpiece downstairs so that she can send out for a loaf of bread for the tea.The coat suddenly drops from the window and the room is bright. Mam looks at me, God above, look at your eyes. Go downstairs and I’ll be down in a minute to wash them. She heats water in the kettle and dabs at my eyes with boric acid powder and tells me I can’t go to the Lyric Cinema today or any day till my eyes clear up though God knows when that will be. She says,You can’t be delivering coal with the state of your eyes.The dust will surely destroy them. I want the job. I want to bring home the shilling. I want to be a man. You can be a man without bringing home a shilling. Go upstairs and lie down and rest your two eyes or it’s a blind man you’ll be. I want that job. I wash my eyes three times a day with the boric acid powder. I remember Seamus in the hospital and how his uncle’s eyes were cured with the blink exercise and I make sure to sit and blink for an hour every day.You can’t beat the blink for the strong eye, he said. 261