Tyger, Tyger

"I wouldn't ... we have no people there." Kit said.

"There's millions of people in Dublin." Emmet said.

"Thousands." Kit corrected him absently.

"Well then?" Emmet said.

"Right." Kit let it go. "What did you read with Sister Madeleine?"

"It's all William Blake now. Somebody gave her a book of his poems and she loves them."

"I don't know anything he wrote except 'Tyger, Tyger'."

"Oh, he wrote lots. That's the only one in the schoolbook, but he wrote thousands and thousands."

"Maybe dozens and dozens." Kit corrected. "Maybe. Say me one."

"I don't remember them."

"Oh go on. You say them over and over."

"I know the one about the piper.. " Emmet went to the window and stood, as he had stood in Sister Madeleine's cottage, looking out the window.

" ' Pipe a song about a Lamb!'

So I piped with merry cheer.

'Piper, pipe that song again.'

So I piped: he wept to hear."

He looked so proud of himself. It was a difficult word to say, piper, at the best of times, and coming so often in the one sentence. Sister Madeleine must be a genius to have cured his stutter like that. Kit didn't notice that her father had come in as Emmer was speaking, but the boy hadn't faltered; his confidence was extraordinary.

And as they at there in the September evening, she felt a shiver over her. It was as if Mother didn't belong to this family at all, as if all there was was Emmet, and Dad, and Rita and herself.

And that mother wouldn't come back.

Mother came back, cold and tired. The heating had broken down on the train; the train itself had broken down twice.