woke and found me there with more bread and jam. They’d gobble everything and then go on about my sins and the hanging. Mam is still asleep though her face is red and there’s a strangling sound when she snores. I have to be careful going through the street because it’s a school day and if Guard Dennehy sees me he’ll drag me off to school and Mr. O’Halloran will knock me all over the classroom.The guard is in charge of school attendance and he loves chasing you on his bicycle and drag- ging you off to school by the ear. There’s a box sitting outside the door of one of the big houses on Barrington Street. I pretend to knock on the door so that I can see what’s in the box, a bottle of milk, a loaf of bread, cheese, tomatoes and, oh, God, a jar of marmalade. I can’t shove all that under my jersey. Oh, God. Should I take the whole box? The people passing by pay me no attention.I might as well take the whole box.My mother would say you might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb. I lift the box and try to look like a messenger boy making a delivery and no one says a word. Malachy and Michael are beside themselves when they see what’s in the box and they’re soon gobbling thick cuts of bread slathered with golden marmalade.Alphie has the marmalade all over his face and hair and a good bit on his legs and belly.We wash down the food with cold tea because we have no fire to heat it. Mam mumbles again for lemonade and I give her half the second bottle to keep her quiet. She calls for more and I mix it with water to stretch it because I can’t be spending my life running around lifting lemonade from pubs.We’re having a fine time of it till Mam begins to rave in the bed about her lovely little daughter taken from her and her twin boys gone before they were three and why couldn’t God take the rich  for  a  change  and  is  there  any  lemonade  in  the  house?  Michael wants to know if Mam will die and Malachy tells him you can’t die till a priest comes.Then Michael wonders if we’ll ever have a fire and hot tea again because he’s freezing in the bed even with the overcoats left over from olden times. Malachy says we should go from house to house asking for turf and coal and wood and we could use Alphie’s pram to carry the load.We should take Alphie with us because he’s small and he smiles and people will see him and feel sorry for him and us.We try to wash all the dirt and lint and feathers and sticky marmalade but when we touch him with water he howls. Michael says he’ll only get dirty 238