He made his mother cry. For a wedding present, Bridget wanted to give Martin the good dining-room set that she had paid for penny by penny at a time when she couldn’t afford it. A big round mahogany table and four matching chairs that must have had pride of place in some great house at one time. She kept that furniture up to the nines, polished and waxed till you could see to do your hair in it. But Martin turned up his nose at it. No secondhand stuff for him and Delia, and the mahogany was too big and heavy anyway. He didn’t want it. He and Delia went and ordered furniture made just for them; new furniture, all walnut — a bed, a chest of drawers, a wardrobe, a washstand, and two sitting-room chairs so that Delia could hold court in style when they had visitors. Those were Martin’s very words. “Now Delia can hold court in style,” he said, and never noticed the look on his mother’s face. Min noticed the bed had vanished out of the house in Dublin, and she was never able to find out what happened to it. But the other things were still there. Above all, the two sitting-room chairs were still there — Martin sat in his own, and she sat in Delia’s. She would take the whole lot back to Wexford when the time came. She would bring the furniture back where it belonged. It was never too late to make things right.

In Wexford, in her own flat, she sat in Delia’s chair, and sometimes for a change sat propped up with pillows in Martin’s big chair, his armchair. It was nice to have the two chairs. The wardrobe and the chest of drawers went into her bedroom, and the washstand into the room she used for a kitchen. Delia’s old sitting-room carpet was threadbare, but the colors held up well, and it looked nice on the floor, almost like an antique carpet. And the hearthrug from the house in Dublin looked very suitable in front of Min’s old fireplace, where so many girls and ladies had warmed themselves when they came in to be measured for a dress, or to have a fitting.