She felt disconcerted by the fact that Kirkby had apparently had neither lot nor part in last night’s expedition. She was also rather glad, with a queer, jealous gladness which she did not understand, and which made her slightly ashamed. But his absence not only detracted from the reality of the dream; it rather frightened her. The superstition always dormant at the back of the country mind rose up to persuade her that Kirkby would never live to cross the ocean with her. But the shadow soon passed, as the other shadows had passed, and the rush of excitement returned more headily than ever. She even sang as she dressed, and then stopped with a laugh, feeling that even the walls of the house must come alive to hear her. She was the type of woman who sings naturally as she moves about, but the number of times she had sung in that house she could count on her ten fingers.... Not only had she not had the heart to sing in a place so hostile to her, but it would have seemed to her rather false, implying to all who might hear it that she was beginning to “settle down.” She had not known that she was going to dislike the place when she first came to it; indeed, she had never even thought about it. She had taken it for granted that she would “settle,” as everybody else, apparently, settled. She had been too young, at that time, to know much about wives who wanted to “move on,” although she had come across more than one (and thought nothing of them) in later life. And she had certainly not known that the place you lived in could be either your enemy or your friend. Yet she might have guessed that it would not do for her to be dumped down just anywhere; that, like so many of Kirkby’s precious plants, she needed a special soil on which to thrive. And at least she might have guessed that she needed room.... Quite early on her mother had noticed the fact, and commented upon it. “Look at her now,” Mattie could vaguely recall her saying, pointing her out to some on-looker as she sat at table, “pushing and shoving at t’ pots till she’s got ’em away from her! She did the same as a babby, and a sight o’ mugs she broke an’ all! She can’t abide to be cluttered up, or to have folks pressing on her, can’t our Mattie.” She had said the same to the school-teacher, when, calling indignantly to demand the meaning of some trifling punishment, she was told that Mattie had insisted upon annexing more of the school-bench than she was entitled to. “She’ll never do as she’s meant if you don’t allow for it,” was her parting advice. “Best give her two folks’ room, and then you’ll have done with it. She’s a big child, to begin with,--as fine a one as you’ll see anywhere, though I says it as shouldn’t,--but it isn’t only that. It’s just she can’t do with feeling she hasn’t room to breathe and spread about in.”