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joy, but once at the door she went silent. First, of course, his
sister came in and looked round to see that everything in the room
was alright; and only then did she let her mother enter. Gregor had
hurriedly pulled the sheet down lower over the couch and put more
folds into it so that everything really looked as if it had just
been thrown down by chance. Gregor also refrained, this time, from
spying out from under the sheet; he gave up the chance to see his
mother until later and was simply glad that she had come. "You can
come in, he can't be seen", said his sister, obviously leading her
in by the hand. The old chest of drawers was too heavy for a pair
of feeble women to be heaving about, but Gregor listened as they
pushed it from its place, his sister always taking on the heaviest
part of the work for herself and ignoring her mother's warnings that
she would strain herself. This lasted a very long time. After
labouring at it for fifteen minutes or more his mother said it would
be better to leave the chest where it was, for one thing it was too
heavy for them to get the job finished before Gregor's father got
home and leaving it in the middle of the room it would be in his way
even more, and for another thing it wasn't even sure that taking the
furniture away would really be any help to him. She thought just
the opposite; the sight of the bare walls saddened her right to her
heart; and why wouldn't Gregor feel the same way about it, he'd been
used to this furniture in his room for a long time and it would make
him feel abandoned to be in an empty room like that. Then, quietly,
almost whispering as if wanting Gregor (whose whereabouts she did
not know) to hear not even the tone of her voice, as she was
convinced that he did not understand her words, she added "and by
taking the furniture away, won't it seem like we're showing that
we've given up all hope of improvement and we're abandoning him to
cope for himself? I think it'd be best to leave the room exactly the
way it was before so that when Gregor comes back to us again he'll
find everything unchanged and he'll be able to forget the time in
between all the easier".

Hearing these words from his mother made Gregor realise that the
lack of any direct human communication, along with the monotonous
life led by the family during these two months, must have made him
confused - he could think of no other way of explaining to himself
why he had seriously wanted his room emptied out. Had he really
wanted to transform his room into a cave, a warm room fitted out
with the nice furniture he had inherited? That would have let him

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