But for a man occupied in such a sphere as fantasy, he was immensely practical. The summer before this he had cycled from Malin Head in the North to Mizzen Head in the South. The sights he’d seen along the way he explained in graphic detail. When he went out on his bike, as was his wont each day, he carried materials for mending a puncture not in the carrier as a countryman might, but in a blue khaki bag over his shoulder. In the bag he also kept a bottle of ink, a pen, two notebooks and something to drink. Puffing and blowing hard, so that sometimes he took them into the air on his knees, he brought the girls in turn up and down the beach on the bar of his bike. Then Sara, and next Catherine, would attempt to ride the bike with one leg inserted under the crossbar to reach the far peddle, and so, sideways, they flew across the hard sand. It was considered unwomanly to throw your leg over the bar of the bike. A man’s bike needed trousers. In his trousers it was O’Muichin’s habit to ride each day to some nearby village and take, he said, particulars. He was also an early riser. The first morning of his stay, Maisie Adams came down to find he already had the fire lit from the embers of the night before, a cup of tea made, and yesterday’s papers spread across his knees.

Not that anyone could ever rise before the father of the girls.

It was Jonathan Adams’ habit to be up and out to the garden before anyone, and then he’d wake the girls and his wife out of their sleep to sniff the wild flowers he’d brought them. They’d sway gingerly up from the depths to find a flower, a dog rose, perhaps, on their pillow. Many’s the morning Catherine found her final dream fill with an exquisite sense of another world, the room of her dream would suddenly fill with a vague blue, a delicate mist hanging tentatively out of reach. Then slowly it would move towards her, enveloping the dreamer; she’d swoon and wake to find a primrose pressed to her nostril.

“You haven’t lived,” Jonathan Adams believed, “if you haven’t smelt the primrose.”

The morning after O’Muichin’s arrival it was single sprigs of lilac the women found. Descending in his socks, the teacher met the Sergeant ascending with the clump of lilac in his hand. Adams hung his head to be found about such a sentimental journey so early in the morning.

“Is fior,” said O’Muichin, nodding towards the flower, “nach bhfuil blath nios cumhra na i.”

“Pray?”

“There’s nothing sweeter,” said O’Muichin, “than the lilac.”

For both men that first day had begun generously.