Exit dancingly. Then they go home and start packing up.
The first thing you always do when you pack is to take up the carpets and oil-cloths. You don't bother picking up the tacks. They are picked up in instalments by members of the family in the early morning and late at night. No electro-magnet ever had half the allurement for a tack that a bare foot exerts. A defenceless big toe will draw them right across a room.
The next move is to drag all the trunks and packing-cases out of their lairs in the attic or cellar and place them in the upper and lower halls in the most unexpected places. Then one is always sure to find them in the dark. Uncle especially, coming home rather late from the lodge meeting—but this is a tragic theme. We have been in uncle's place.
Pictures are then taken off the walls and laid in readily accessible places on the floor. In this way one can put one's foot through a lovely seascape, or tread upon the features of defunct relatives in enlarged photographs, with the minimum of exertion. Personally, we prefer walking into mirrors—the pieces look so much prettier.
Gradually the house assumes the appearance of a place in the devastated area of Flanders. Furniture is piled up in barricades everywhere. Bales of linen and curtains and that sort of thing are built up into parapets. All they need is a firing-step and a periscope or two to look like the real thing. Behind these obstructions the family cowers as it eats its meals—if the food may be so described—and seeks shelter from the prying eye when it goes to bed. You see, the windows are all bare and one can't be too careful of the observer in the sniping-post across the way. Probably the best course is to sit on the side of one's bed and undress in the dark. Not only would this plan of action be more likely to commend itself to the Moral Reform League, but it has the further advantage of avoiding the tacks. One is not so apt to give an impromptu imitation of a man who has inadvertently stepped on a porcupine.
At last the great day arrives! You are awakened by a large hairy man, who wants to know when you are going to get out of your bed so he can take it apart and load it into the van. Hurriedly you jump into the oldest and most primitive clothing permitted by the rules of society and the state of the weather. And you get busy—Homerically busy!
It is true that you have hired a couple of men and a huge waggon. But these gentlemen are professionals. They direct the operation. They are the headquarters' staff, so to speak. Occasionally they take a hand in the game and then you wish they hadn't. You beg them to be careful with the piano—rented—and promptly they carry off half the front porch on the end of it. The enormous walnut whatnot, which has been "an old family possession" ever since you bought it second-hand, is made to look like part of the steerage furniture of the Ark.
Some artistic friends of ours had a fine cast of the Venus of Milo. It was the only thing in the house to be proud of, and they were. They loved it so much that they had never even pawned it, no matter how bitter the temporary stringency. Then one sad moving-day, a horny-handed cyclops with fusel oil instead of brains picked it up and dropped it. If Venus had disputed the right-of-way with an armored car she couldn't have been reduced to more or smaller pieces.
"Oh, how could you—how could you be so stupid?" sobbed the lady of the house.
"Ah, it ain't worth makin' all that fuss about," growled the son of Anak, "sure the darn old thing was bust anyhow."