Paddy talks to him and tells him he’s a good dog and we’re hungry and go home to your mother.The dog licks Paddy’s face and trots away wav- ing his tail and Paddy is delighted with himself.We stuff apples into our shirts till we can barely get back over the wall to run into a long field and sit under a hedge eating the apples till we can’t swallow another bit and we stick our faces into a stream for the lovely cool water.Then we run to opposite ends of a ditch to shit and wipe ourselves with grass and thick leaves. Paddy is squatting and saying,There’s nothing in the world like a good feed of apples, a drink of water and a good shit, better than any sangwidge of cheese and mustard and Dotty O’Neill can shove his apple up his arse. There are three cows in a field with their heads over a stone wall and they say moo to us. Paddy says, Bejasus, ’tis milkin’ time, and he’s over the wall, stretched on his back under a cow with her big udder hanging into his face.He pulls on a teat and squirts milk into his mouth. He stops squirting and says, Come on, Frankie, fresh milk. ’Tis lovely. Get that other cow, they’re all ready for the milkin’. I get under the cow and pull on a teat but she kicks and moves and I’m sure she’s going to kill me. Paddy comes over and shows me how to do  it,  pull  hard  and  straight  and  the  milk  comes  out  in  a  powerful stream.The two of us lie under the one cow and we’re having a great time filling ourselves with milk when there’s a roar and there’s a man with a stick charging across the field.We’re over the wall in a minute and he can’t follow us because of his rubber boots. He stands at the wall and shakes his stick and shouts that if he ever catches us we’ll have the length of his boot up our arses and we laugh because we’re out of harm’s way and I’m wondering why anyone should be hungry in a world full of milk and apples. It’s all right for Paddy to say Dotty can shove the apple up his arse but I don’t want to rob orchards and milk cows forever and I’ll always try to win Dotty’s apple peel so that I can go home and tell Dad how I answered the hard questions. We’re walking back through Ballinacurra.There’s rain and lightning and we run but it’s hard for me with the sole of my shoe flapping and threatening to trip me. Paddy can run all he wants in his long bare feet and you hear them slapping on the pavement. My shoes and stockings are soaked and they make their own sound,squish,squish.Paddy notices that and we make a song from our two sounds, slap slap, squish, squish, slap squish, squish slap.We laugh so hard over our song we have to hold 161