Min sat beside her own gas fire in her own flat in Wexford and considered life and crime and punishment according to the laws of arithmetic. She counted up and down the years, and added and subtracted the questions and answers, and found that she came out with a very tidy balance in her favor. She glanced over to the old brown chest that now held those certificates, still in the big brown paper envelope that Delia had kept them in. Min intended to do away with the certificates, but not yet. She liked looking at them — especially at the one given for violin playing. It was strange that in spite of her good memory she had quite forgotten that Delia had a little reputation as a musician when she first met Martin. A very little reputation, and she had come by it easily, because she had been given every chance. All the chances in Min’s own family had gone to Martin, because he was the boy, and he took all their chances with him when he left. And spoiled his own chances for good, because he did nothing for the rest of his life, tied down as he was, slaving to support a wife and children, turning himself into a nobody. After all that promise and all that talk and all those plans, he made nothing of himself. A few pounds in the bank, a few sticks of furniture, a few books, and a garden that still bloomed although it had gone untended for six years — that was the sum of his life, all he had to show for himself. He would have done better to think of his mother, and stay at home, and benefit from the encouragement of his own family, all of them pushing for him in everything he did. With his ability and his brains and the nice way he had about him, he could have done anything. He could have risen to any height, a natural leader like him, able to be at ease anywhere with anybody. As it was, he died friendless. How could he have friends when he was ashamed to invite anybody to the house? He was ashamed of Delia and ashamed of the house, and more than anything else, he was unwilling to let people know of his unhappiness. He was like all of us in that, Min thought, proud and sensitive and fond of our privacy. Delia came from another class of people altogether. They were a different breed, more coarse-grained than we are, country people, accustomed to being out in all weathers, plowing, and gathering in the hay, and dealing with animals. They had no thoughts in their heads beyond saving the corn. They tried to be friendly; Min gave them that much. She wanted to be fair. But she didn’t trust them, and in any case they were rejoicing over herself and her mother, because Martin made himself such an easy catch. Min didn’t like to see her mother being made a fool of, and Martin too being made a fool of, because he didn’t know what he was doing when he turned around and got married. He went out of his head about that girl, mad with longing, all decency gone. He was like somebody in a delirium. Min couldn’t help feeling a bit contemptuous of him, to see him so helpless. And then the same thing overcame Clare and Polly, Clare marrying a dirty shabby fellow nearly old enough to be her father, and Polly marrying a commercial traveler and having one child after another until she nearly had her mother and Min out in the street with the expense she put on them. But Martin started it all, vanishing out of their lives as casually as though he had never been more than a lodger in the house.