Firefly Summer by Maeve Binchy

little Grace.
    And the stern scornful look of Kerry, the tall golden-haired son. The boy he had promised to take back home. The boy who said so little to him these days that Patrick had no idea what he was thinking about at all.
    Fergus wondered what it would be like to be a solicitor in a big place where you had no idea what the day would bring. In other places he supposed he could stand on his own doorstep and stretch without four passers-by asking him had he a bad back like his father, and sending messages in to Miss Purcell or advising him on the rather glum-looking window boxes. Still he wouldn’t change it. And he could escape and get on with his life a bit, as he had told his father last night, if he went twenty-five miles to a dance organised by a rugby club. There were grand girls there who wouldn’t expect to be taken to Meagher’s jewellery shop next morning if a kiss and a cuddle had been part of the night’s entertainment.
    He saw Kate Ryan walking up River Road and turning into Bridge Street. She waved.
    ‘Are you out with your stopwatch in case I’m a second late?’
    ‘Just waiting for the bells to ring for mass. If there had been one peal you’d have been fired. No, I was having a good stretch actually.’
    ‘Don’t you look like a young Greek god. Did you have a good time in Ballykane last night?’
    His arms dropped to his sides mid-stretch. ‘How did you know where I was . . . ?’
    ‘I was there myself dancing away beside you. You never saw me?’
    ‘No you weren’t, don’t be ridiculous, who said it to you?’
    ‘Jack Coyne. Some fellow couldn’t start his car and rang Jack at all hours in the morning to go and pick him up.’
    ‘God, you can’t do much in this place, can you? And there was I thinking it wasn’t such a bad place. No surprises.’
    ‘It isn’t a bad place. Do you want surprises?’
    They were walking companionably in to start the day’s work as the church bells began to peal at ten to nine to let the devout know it was time to put on the hats and pick up the missals for daily mass. The early devout would already have attended seven o’clock mass, said this morning by a perplexed Father Hogan, whose mind was as much on the dripping and drunken housekeeper as it was on the liturgy.
    ‘No I don’t want surprises,’ Fergus said. ‘In the last few hours I’ve found my father nearly burning the house down, and now you tell me Jack Coyne has the entire details of my little escapade last night.’
    Kate was at her desk opening post. It was a job they did together since the invention of the filing system. Kate wanted to check that the young master knew not only where to find everything but where to file it as well. She had arranged a bowl of flowers, a blotter and pens on his famous table by the window where every document used to end up in the old days.
    ‘I think I’ll lay off surprises for a while,’ Fergus said,throwing a heap of papers on the floor beside him out of habit, and picking them up sheepishly to place them in the pending tray on the desk.
    ‘You know they say they come in threes,’ said Kate absently, as she began to read a letter which had been delivered by hand. It was a request from Patrick O’Neill that Slattery and Slattery should act for him in his application to build a hotel and apply for a pub licence as well. He thought that since he was going to live in the area he would very much like the local man to act on his behalf.
    ‘God Almighty, he’s going to build a hotel,’ Kate said, standing up.
    Fergus had come to read the letter over her shoulder. ‘I won’t act for him – he can find his own attorney and counsellors and whatever they call them over there,’ he said after a long silence.
    She looked at him blankly. ‘Why won’t you act for him?’
    ‘Because if his application is granted and he gets his licence, then he’ll open a pub . . .’
    ‘You have to take his business . . .’ Kate was pale.
    ‘I do not have to take