from the tap with the moon beaming away and Kathleen Purcell from next door perched up on the wall looking for her cat. God, Frankie McCourt, what  are  you  doin’ in  your  grandmother’s  dress?  and  you have to stand there in the dress with the kettle in your hand and explain how you washed your clothes which are hanging there on the line for all to see and you were so cold in the bed you put on your grand- mother’s  dress  and  your  uncle  Pat, The  Abbot,  fell  down  and  was brought home by Aunt Aggie and her husband, Pa Keating, and she drove you into the backyard to fill this kettle and you’ll take off this dress as soon as ever your clothes are dry because you never had any desire to go through life in your dead grandmother’s dress. Now Kathleen Purcell lets out a scream,falls off the wall,forgets the cat,  and  you  can  hear  her  giggling  into  her  blind  mother,  Mammy, Mammy, wait till I tell you about Frankie McCourt abroad in the back- yard in his dead grandmother’s dress.You know that once Kathleen Pur- cell gets a bit of scandal the whole lane will know it before morning and you might as well stick your head out the window and make a gen- eral announcement about yourself and the dress problem. By the time the kettle boils The Abbot is asleep from the drink and Aunt Aggie says she and Uncle Pa will have a drop of tea themselves and she doesn’t mind if I have a drop myself. Uncle Pa says on second thought the black dress could be the cassock of a Dominican priest and he goes down on his knees and says, Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.Aunt Aggie says, Get up, you oul’ eejit, and stop makin’ a feck of religion.Then she says,And you what are you doin’ in this house? I can’t tell her about Mam and Laman Griffin and the excitement in the loft. I tell her I was thinking of staying here a while because of the great distance from Laman Griffin’s house to the post office and as soon as I get on my feet we’ll surely find a decent place and we’ll all move on, my mother and brothers and all. Well, she says, that’s more than your father would do. 308