No good? Angela’s Sheehan’s son? Dance, Frankie, or I’ll get outa this bed an’ wheel you round the house. My shoe is broken, Mr. Clohessy. Frankie, Frankie, you’re bringin’ the cough on me.Will you dance for the love o’ Jesus so I can remember me youth with your mother in the Wembley Hall.Take off the feckin’ shoe, Frankie, an’ dance. I have to make up dances and tunes to go with them the way I did a long time ago when I was young. I dance around the room with one shoe because I forgot to take it off. I try to make up words, Oh,The Walls  of  Limerick  are  falling  down,  falling  down,  falling  down, The Walls of Limerick falling down and the River Shannon kills us. Mr. Clohessy is laughing in the bed. Oh, Jaysus, I never heard likes o’ that on land or sea.That’s a great leg for the dancing you have there, Frankie. Oh, Jaysus. He coughs and brings up ropes of green and yellow stuff. It makes me sick to look at it and I wonder if I should go home from all this sickness and this bucket and let my parents kill me if they want to. Paddy lies down on a mattress by the window and I lie beside him. I keep my clothes on like everybody else and I even forget to take off my other shoe, which is wet and squishy and stinks. Paddy falls asleep right away and I look at his mother sitting by the bit of a fire smoking another cigarette. Paddy’s father groans and coughs and spits into the bucket. He says, Feckin’ blood, and she says,You’ll have to go into the sanatorium sooner or later. I will not.The day they put you in there is the end of you. You could be givin’the consumption to the children.I could get the guards to take you away you’re that much of a danger to the children. If they were to get it they’d have it be now. The fire dies and Mrs. Clohessy climbs over him into the bed. In a minute she’s snoring even if he’s still coughing and laughing about the days  of  his  youth  when  he  danced  with Angela  Sheehan  light  as  a feather in the Wembley Hall. It’s cold in the room and I’m shivering in my wet clothes. Paddy is shivering too but he’s asleep and he doesn’t know he’s cold.I don’t know if I should stay here or get up and go home but who wants to be wan- dering the streets when a guard might ask you what you’re doing out. It’s my first time away from my family and I know I’d rather be in my own house with the smelly lavatory and stable next door. It’s bad when 165