what’s up with you, Frankie, and the two eyes in your head all gone brown? I have an infection, Seamus. Yerra, you’ll be over that before you’re married, Frankie.The eyes need exercise.The blink is great value for the eyes. I had an uncle with bad eyes and the blink saved him. He sat an hour ever day and blinked and  it  stood  to  him  in  the  end. Wound  up  with  powerful  eyes,  so he did. I want to ask him more about the blink and the powerful eyes but he says, Now do you remember the poem, Frankie, the lovely poem of Patricia? He  stands  in  the  aisle  between  the  beds  with  his  mop  and  his bucket and says the highwayman poem and all the patients stop their moaning and the nuns and nurses stand and listen and on and on goes Seamus till he comes to the end and everyone goes mad clapping and cheering him and he tells the world he loves that poem he’ll have it in his head  forever no matter where he goes and if it wasn’t for Frankie McCourt and his typhoid there and poor Patricia Madigan with the dipteria that’s gone God rest her he’d never know the poem and there I  am  famous  in  the  eye  ward  of  the  City  Home  Hospital  and  all because of Seamus. Mam can’t come to visit every day, it’s a long way out, she doesn’t always have the money for the bus and the walk is hard on her corns. She thinks my eyes look better though you can’t tell with all that brown stuff, which looks and smells like iodine and if it’s anything like iodine it must burn. Still, they say the bitterer the medicine the quicker the cure. She gets permission to take me for a walk around the grounds when the weather clears and there’s a strange sight, Mr.Timoney stand- ing against the wall where the old people are with his eyes raised to the sky. I want to talk to him and I have to ask Mam because you never know what’s right or wrong in a hospital. Mr.Timoney. Who is it? Who do we have? Frank McCourt, sir. Francis, ah, Francis. Mam says, I’m his mother, Mr.Timoney. Well, then, the two of ye are blessed. I have neither kith nor kin nor Macushla my dog.And what are you doing in this place, Francis? I have an infection in my eyes. 228