“That’s enough of this nonsense,” Lily said. “We are going to be late for school.”

“Nonsense yourself,” Margaret said. But she jumped up, too, and pushed past Lily so as to get to the hall first. Bennie ran past both of them and began smelling their schoolbags, which were lying on the chair in the hall. The bags were particularly interesting to Bennie because each bag contained a wrapped lunch. Mrs. Bagot would not be bringing the children their lunch to school today. Today she had to stay close to the house and wait for the sofa. The children knew all about the sofa, and they were looking forward to its arrival just as much as she was. It was an important day in the house, and its importance had grown overnight, while they slept. Yesterday seemed a long way in the past, gone, quite gone. And tomorrow had a long way to travel before it would reach them. Tomorrow was still far away in the distant future. Mrs. Bagot could not think of tomorrow. In fact, she could not think of anything — the sofa kept getting in the way, and it was restless, as though it longed to be in the house and settled down so that ordinary life could begin again and everybody could go about their business as usual.