Moving House

Had Mrs. Percival's husband, after Mrs. Percival had decided to move house and arranged for the transport of furniture and found a new home for them to live in, had he watched her attentively during these operations and sometimes perhaps run about the house in and out of fast-emptying rooms; and had he, at the new place, followed her from new room to new room and got up when she got up from her armchair now in its new place, and been close behind her when she moved to the kitchen where he could have kept his eyes on her aproned back, and while she had been splashing and scrubbing in the new bathroom had her husband sat outside looking up at the door-knob, and had he followed her everywhere on her days out and crouched and turned his head up to the new sky with open mouth  -  then, Ah! then could she have smiled and sighed and arched her back and afterwards patted him on the head perhaps.

But this was not how it happened. For Mrs. Percival's husband seeing a gap between her feet had seized his one opportunity, rushed among the furniture piled high on the removals van, still being loaded, where he could not be prodded out from a cubby hole amongst the furniture not even by the longest rods (a piece of quick action which the carriers pulling their long chins had to give him credit for). And now he could be found in the new house, by any visitor who happened to call, sometimes crouching against the sides of furniture where lingered his smell, furniture rubbed smooth by his flanks, and sometimes pacing close to a wall, sweeping his long head from side to side in self-absorption. The hoped-for predictable move (suitable to Mrs, P.) was not how it happened and she was forced to some other conclusion, and at last, the good woman began to bite her lip.