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Emily sighed. “Yes, of course you’re right. It wouldn’t help much. But Ireland has far fewer, hasn’t it?” That was only a polite question. She knew the answer.

“Yes, but it’s different being a seaman. They pick up expressions from all over the place, and accents too, sometimes. I’m not good at it. I can hear he’s not from this bit of coast, but it doesn’t even have to be north that he’s from, does it? It could be anywhere. Cork, or Killarny, or even Dublin.”

Emily bent and brushed up the dirt into a dustpan, not that there was much. It was a gesture rather than a real task. “No, you are right. He could be from anywhere. Were most of the people in the village born here?”

“Just about all. Mr. Yorke comes from Galway, I think, but I daresay his family are from one of the villages closer. His roots are deep. If you want to know the history, he’s the man to ask. It’s not just the tales he can tell you, but the meanings behind them.” She smiled a little ruefully. “All the old feuds between the Flahertys and the Conneeleys, the good works of the Rosses and the Martins—and the bad too—and the love stories and the fights going back to the days of the Kings of Ireland in the time before history.”

“Really? Then I must see if he will tell me.” Emily accepted the idea, although it was not the ancient past she was seeking. Again she tried to bring the conversation back to the present. “The Flahertys seem interesting. What was Seamus Flaherty like? I gather Brendan takes after him a lot?”

Maggie avoided her eyes and started to watch what she was doing with great care. “Oh, I suppose so,” she said casually, but there was a tension in her voice. “In a superficial sort of way. He certainly looks like him. Same eyes, same way of walking, as if he owned the world, but was happy for you to have a share in it.”

Emily smiled. “Did you like him?” she asked.

Maggie was silent, her back stiff, her hands moving more slowly.

“Seamus, I mean,” Emily clarified.

“Oh, well enough, I suppose.” Maggie started to move briskly again. “As long as you didn’t take him too seriously, he was fine enough.”

“Seriously?”

“Well, you couldn’t trust him,” Maggie elaborated. “Charm the birds out of the sky, he could, and make you laugh till you couldn’t get your breath. But half of what he said was nonsense. Got the moon in his eyes, that one. And drank most men under the table.”

“An eye for the women?” Emily asked bluntly.

Maggie blushed. “Oh, for sure. That was one thing you could rely on. That, and a fistfight.”

Emily did not need to ask if Mrs. Flaherty had loved him; she had seen it in her face. Behind the overprotection of her son, the slight distance she placed between herself and others, there was a deep vulnerability. Now its explanation was easy to see.

But Emily also heard in Maggie’s voice a tenderness, a self-consciousness that betrayed her too, not for the father, but for the son. Was that also a defense of one of their own, a man too easily misunderstood by an English stranger? Or was it more than that?

She bent her attention to helping complete the household tasks. Maggie did the ironing, quite a skilled work when the two flatirons had to be heated alternately on the stove, and used at a narrow range of temperatures, not so hot so it scorched the linen, nor too cool to press out the creases.

Emily peeled and sliced vegetables and set them in cold water until Maggie was ready to make the stew.

In the afternoon Emily walked along the shore to the shop. They needed more tea, sugar, and a few other things. The air was fresh and crisp, but with no sting of ice in it, as there would have been in London. It was still westerly off the ocean, and the salt and kelp were in every breath. The sky was clouded far out to sea, but overhead it was clear blue with only a few thunderclouds towering in bright drifts, moving slowly, dazzling white.

The shore itself was uneven, sand obliterating some of the old grass and flower-strewn stretches, dunes moved from one place