kitchen, onetwothreefourfivesixseven onetwothree and a onetwothree. She has a good laugh with Bridey.That’s not too bad for your first time. In a month you’ll be like a regular Cyril Benson. I don’t want to be Cyril Benson. I want to be Fred Astaire. They  turn  hysterical,  laughing  and  squirting  tea  out  of  their mouths, Jesus love him, says Bridey. Doesn’t he have a great notion of himself. Fred Astaire how are you. Mam says Fred Astaire went to his lessons every Saturday and didn’t go around kicking the toes out of his boots and if I wanted to be like him I’d have to go to Mrs. O’Connor’s every week. The fourth Saturday morning Billy Campbell knocks at our door. Mrs. McCourt, can Frankie come out and play? Mam tells him, No, Billy. Frankie is going to his dancing lesson. He waits for me at the bottom of Barrack Hill. He wants to know why I’m dancing, that everyone knows dancing is a sissy thing and I’ll wind up like Cyril Benson wearing a kilt and medals and dancing all over with girls. He says next thing I’ll be sitting in the kitchen knitting socks. He says dancing will destroy me and I won’t be fit to play any kind of football, soccer, rugby or Gaelic football itself because the danc- ing teaches you to run like a sissy and everyone will laugh. I tell him I’m finished with the dancing, that I have sixpence in my pocket for Mrs. O’Connor that’s supposed to go into the black boy’s mouth, that I’m going to the Lyric Cinema instead. Sixpence will get the two of us in with tuppence left over for two squares of Cleeves’ tof- fee, and we have a great time looking at Riders of the Purple Sage. Dad is sitting by the fire with Mam and they want to know what steps I learned today and what they’re called. I already did “The Siege of Ennis” and “The Walls of Limerick,” which are real dances. Now I have to make up names and dances. Mam says she never heard of a dance called “The Siege of Dingle”but if that’s what I learned go ahead, dance it, and I dance around the kitchen with my hands down by my sides making my own music, diddley eye di eye di eye diddley eye do you do you, Dad and Mam clapping in time with my feet. Dad says, Och, that’s a fine dance and you’ll be a powerful Irish dancer and a credit to the men who died for their country. Mam says, That wasn’t much for a sixpence. Next week it’s a George Raft film and the week after that a cow- boy film with George O’Brien.Then it’s James Cagney and I can’t take 143