Only in one instance, however, did he make any comment upon the upheaval. Mattie, as far as he could see, had moved almost every piece of furniture in the house, merely, it would appear, in order to prove that it was possible to move it. He ventured to point out that some time would have to elapse before they could even hold their sale, and she answered him rather curiously as they sat down to their meal. “Nay, I know it looks rather silly to be moving the stuff so soon, but I’d a reason for doing it. We’ve got to settle what we’re going to take, you’ll think on, and what we’re going to sell; and I thought the sooner I started in at the job, the better. But I found when I came to think about it that I couldn’t _see_ the things in any spot but this! In fact, it wasn’t till I’d started pushing and pulling ’em about that I could do anything with ’em at all!” “You do get used to seeing things in the same spot,” Kirkby said, feeling at the sight of the “pushed and pulled” objects surrounding him much as he would have felt before a bed of uprooted flowers. “You do that!” Mattie agreed, passing a hand over her heated face. “That used you forget what they’re like altogether. Why, I found I didn’t even know the shapes and sizes of things when I came to look at them!” “They get part of a place,--that’s what it is,” Kirkby said. “You don’t see them as if they were by themselves, but as if they were built in.” “Ours seemed built in right enough, this morning, anyhow,--I know that! I never remember them taking such a lot of managing before. It was almost as if they knew what it was all about, and didn’t mean to budge if they could help it!” It was warmer this morning, Kirkby said, and likely she was feeling it a bit,--looking out as he spoke at the thin, young, spring-glow lying over the gardens, and wondering again how yesterday could have been so different. “Nay, it wasn’t that altogether, though I’m not saying it mightn’t have something to do with it....” Getting up, Mattie set an open tart, light as an autumn leaf, on the table between them. “But I can tell you I was real taken aback when I found I didn’t even know my own furniture! I made sure, for instance, as that dresser of ours would be first-class for the new house, but now that I’ve had a right good look at it, I doubt it’s over-big. Then I thought as how that corner-cupboard we bought would do nicely for our pots, but as soon as I got it down I saw it was too small. It’s a queer thing, it seems to me, when you’re so far out with your own stuff! It’s like living with folks that long you don’t even know their faces.” “They get part of you,” Kirkby said once more, as he had said about the house. “Faces or furniture, it’s the same thing. They get that much part of you, after a while, you don’t rightly seem to notice them.”