She had seen herself passing between the houses, moving from one to the other with the assurance of long custom, and never once feeling that anything was strange. She had known which paths to take, which windows to look through, which rooms to enter. She had known that you always had trouble with Maggie’s doors, and that Ellen’s water-supply wasn’t as good as it might be. She had known that Luke had a piano, and that Joe (who hadn’t risen to one yet, in spite of his fondness for humming), sent his children to Luke’s to practise. She had known the hours they kept, the clothes they wore, their furniture and their meals, their neighbours and their hired men. And they had known that she knew. She had fitted into their midst as a glove fits a hand which has never taken it off. And other things, too,--the sort which nobody told, and which couldn’t by any chance have got into their letters. Just when Maggie’s husband was a bit tiresome with Maggie, and where Joe’s missis failed in being just what he had hoped she would be.... Those queer sisters-in-law of Ellen’s; and Luke’s father-in-law, who was the sort you could quite well do without.... The trouble about the bit of money which Joe had lent Maggie’s husband.... The trouble about the bit of money which Ellen had lent Joe.... It surprised her to remember how much at home she had felt, how completely in tune with conditions which she had never experienced in the flesh. Why, she had even felt at home in the house which she had seen as already built for herself and Kirkby, although in point of fact it was not yet in existence! Just by closing her eyes she could see herself in, it again, could feel, as she had felt in the night, her pleasure in her environment. It was a small house, of course, with no more than four rooms in it, at the most, but it was a smallness which made for comfort and not constriction. She had felt so happy in it, so snug, that she laughed contentedly at the very remembrance. It was a queer thing, when you came to think of it, and rather uncanny, that you could feel at home in a house which hadn’t even been built! There were more than four rooms in the cottage in which she had lived so long, but she had always felt pressed in upon by it, and as if she could hardly breathe. It was a good place, of course, and a big one, as cottages went,--almost too big, indeed, when it came to single-handed work. But she had never yet felt at home in it, or known the intimate joy of the home-lover and the home-maker. She had done her duty by it, that was all. She had lived and worked in it merely as a caretaker might have lived and worked, and on the few occasions when she had gone away from it she had felt as if it had ceased to exist....