Is that you, Frankie McCourt? she says. God, I wouldn’t know you you’re that big. Come in, will you. She’s wearing a bright frock with flowers all over and shiny new shoes.There are two children on the floor playing with a toy train. On the table there is a teapot, cups with saucers, a bottle of milk, a loaf of bread, butter, jam.There are two beds over by the window where there were none before. The big bed in the corner is empty and she must know what I’m wondering. He’s gone, she says, but he’s not dead. Gone t’ England with Paddy. Have a cup o’ tay an’ a bit o’ bread.You need it, God help us.You look like one left over from the Famine itself.Ate that bread an’ jam an’ build yourself up. Paddy always talked about you and Dennis, my poor husband that was in the bed, never got over the day your mother came an’ sang the song about the Kerry dancing. He’s over in England now making sandwiches in a canteen and sending me a few bob every week. You’d wonder what the English are thinking about when they take a man that has the consumption and give him a job making sandwiches. Paddy has a grand job in a pub in Cricklewood, which is in England. Dennis would still be here if it wasn’t for Paddy climbin’ the wall for the tongue. Tongue? Dennis had the craving, so he did, for a nice sheep’s head with a bit of cabbage and a spud so up with me to Barry the butcher with the last few shillings I had. I boiled that head an’ sick an’ all as he was Dennis couldn’t wait for it to be done. He was a demon there in the bed callin’ for the head an’ when I gave it to him on the plate he was delighted with himself suckin’ the marrow outa every inch of that head.Then he finishes an’ he says, Mary, where is the tongue? What tongue? says I. The tongue of this sheep. Every sheep is born with a tongue that lets him go ba ba ba and there’s a great lack of tongue in this head. Go up to Barry the butcher and demand it. So up with me to Barry the butcher and he said,That bloody sheep came in here bleatin’an’cryin’so much we cut the tongue from her and thrun it to the dog who gobbled it up and ever since ba bas like a sheep and if he doesn’t quit I’ll cut his tongue and throw it to the cat. Back I go to Dennis and he gets frantic in the bed. I want that tongue, he says.All the nourishment is in the tongue.And what do you think happens next but my Paddy,that was your friend,goes up to Barry 312