There were only two children — Lily, who was nine, and Margaret, who was seven. When they grew tired of walking around on the carpet they sat on it, and then they lay down. They were dressed for school and they had very little time to spare, but Mrs. Bagot could not bear to hurry them. By the time they came home from school in the afternoon, a good part of the carpet would be covered up by the sofa and they would never be able to play in the room like that again. She thought she had never seen them so completely before, except of course out in the open — in the garden, or on the street, somewhere like that. They were lying on the floor with their heads toward the windows and their feet toward where she was in the back sitting room, which they often called the dining room. They were on the carpet, and she was standing on the shiny linoleum that covered the dining-room floor. She could see the soles of their shoes, their knees, the hems of their dresses and of the coats that covered their dresses, and the palms of their hands — their hands were flung out, and she could see the insides of all their fingers. She could hardly bear it. They were just as they always were, but she put her hands together as though she were going to applaud them. She wanted to laugh out loud. She felt weak and silly with pride, with surprise and a joy that held no taint of fear. The children were safe. There was no one near to cut them down, or to put them in their place, or to look at them with the ugly eyes of suspicion and tell them they were too sure of themselves. There was no one to tell them to stop. Mrs. Bagot thought that the worst thing in the world was to be told to stop when you had no intention of doing anything and did not know that you had been doing something you should stop doing.