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Have you any idea what next, mouse? For I’m afraid I don’t!”
    There may be a school of thought which subscribes to the theory that periods in confined darkness must inevitably result in the minddrawing on its infinite resources—even in hopelessly adverse circumstances—and ensuing in creating, imaginatively, of course, surroundings of a much more congenial nature; I cannot say for certain. What is certain, however, is that it was the course of action decided upon and most emphatically followed by Pat McNab, as became plainly evident when he woke up one morning to find himself, not burdened by damp and dark and the asphyxiation-inducing aroma of crumbling plaster, but bearing witness to one of the brightest of sunny days that it is possible for the mind to conceive, sitting within that very cellar with his mother—seeing them both beneath a spreading elm, chaining daisies. Such was his happiness at being with her once again that he was as giddy as a young goat you would see prancing about any mountainside.
    “But what I can’t get over, Mammy,” he continued—they were discussing Mrs. Tubridy—”is the big hole in her chin!”
    His mother shook her head.
    “Aye! With the hair coming out of it, I declare to God, for all the world like a coiled spring! God help poor Mattie Tubridy, Pat! Having to look at that every morning of his life!”
    Pat nodded and wiped the tears from his eyes.
    “Aye!” he said. “But sure he’s dead now, God rest him!”
    Just then, his mother opened the lid of the picnic basket.
    “Pat?” she smiled. “Would you like a sup of lemonade?”
    Pat beamed.
    “Yes, Mammy,” he replied.
    He was a litde unsure as to whether he had noted a litde twinkle in his mother’s eye. But this was confirmed as she continued, “Or maybe something a bit stronger?”
    “Now you’re talking, Mammy!” cried Pat, slapping his hands together as the bottle of Johnnie Walker gleamed golden in the afternoon summer sun.
    He smiled as his mother ran her fingers through his hair.
    “Now who’s good to you!” she cried. “It’d be a long time before that old haverel, that old haybag you-know-who’d let you have a little glugeen, Pat! Am I right?”
    “Now you’re talking, Mammy!” Pat cried, filling his mouth up with whiskey.
    “Just because you’d need a hose to get it down her auld tight gob!”
    Pat nearly fell over when he heard his mother saying this. He certainly spilled whiskey all down the front of his coat!
    “Ha ha, Mammy!” he cried helplessly. “A hose! Oh, God bless us!”
    “Have another drop, son!” his mother encouraged him. “Get it down you!”
    Pat shook his head and rubbed whiskey beads off his chin with his sleeve.
    “Oh, Mammy, you’re an awful case!” he cried.
    Then his mother went and spilled some whiskey.
    “God bless us, I think I’m stocious myself! Get up out of that, Pat McNab, you boy you!”
    “Wo-ho! Mrs. McNab, fine girl you are! Cripes but you’re powerful! C’mere out of that till I give you a dance!”
    “Bejapers now make sure and mind me corns!” yelped his mother as she took his hand and rose to her feet.
    The sunlight was like a shoal of arrows cast by some invisible medieval army showering through the interlocking boughs of the trees, and it was difficult for the birds not to display some twinges of jealousy as he and his mother sang together:
    Come day go day

Wishing my heart it was Sunday

Drinking buttermilk all the week …
    Pat rounded off the verse with a sweep of his arm and a declamatory: “Whiskey on a Sunday!”
    It may be that if he had been forced to remain in his place of confinement for even one more single day it would have had the required effect on Pat McNab by Mrs. Tubridy, but opening the door and revealing herself standing in a shaft of light in an almost apologedc manner was not perhaps, in retrospect, the wisest course of action for his self-appointed behavior modifier. As indeed neither were any of her repeated