s into the garden to eat gooseberries.

He put up his right hand and saved his right cheek, and then she tried
to slap him on the left, but he put up his left hand, and this went on
until she grew so angry that Ulick thought he had better allow her to
slap him, for if she did not slap him at once she might kill him.

"Down with your hands, sir, down with your hands, sir," she cried, but
before he had time to let her slap him she said: "I will give you
enough of bees," and she caught one that had rested on a flower and put
it down his neck. The bee stung him in the neck where the flesh is
softest, and he ran away screaming, unable to rid himself of the bee.
He broke through the hedges of sweet pea, and he dashed through the
poppies, trampling through the flower beds, until he reached the dry
ditch.

There is something frightful in feeling a stinging insect in one's
back, and Ulick lay in the dry ditch, rolling among the leaves in
anguish. He thought he was stung all over, he heard his mother
laughing, and she called him a coward through an opening in the bushes,
but he knew she could not follow him down the ditch. His neck had
already begun to swell, but he forgot the pain of the sting in hatred.
He felt he must hate his mother, however wicked it might be to do so.
His mother had often slapped him, he had heard of boys being slapped,
but no one had ever put a bee down a boy's back before; he felt he must
always hate her, and creeping up through the brambles to where he could
get a view of the garden, he waited until he saw her walk up the path
into the house; and then, stealing back to the bottom of the ditch, he
resolved to get over the paling. A few minutes after he heard her
calling him, and then he climbed the paling, and he crossed the dreaded
hollow, stumbling over the old stones.

As he crossed the meadow he caught sight of a boat coming through the
lock, but the lock-keeper knew him by sight, and would tell the
bargeman where he came from, and he would be sent home to his mother.
He ran on, trying to get ahead of the boat, creeping through hedges,
frightened lest he should not be able to find the canal! Now he
stopped, sure that he had lost it; his brain seemed to be giving way,
and he ran on like a mad child up the bank. Oh, what joy! The canal
flowed underneath the bank. The horse had just passed, the barge was
coming, and Ulick ran down the bank calling to the bargeman. He plunged
into the water, getting t