“I hope they don’t drag it across the top of the railing and tear the underneath part,” Mrs. Bagot said. She was trembling. “Listen to me,” she said to the children. “We have to be very careful not to get in the men’s way. When the sofa starts coming through the gate, you two run back and sit on the stairs, and I’ll go back and stand at the head of the kitchen stairs. That way we’ll leave the hall free and clear and there won’t be any damage and the men will have room to move around. Now, are you listening to me — when they get it to the gate, we’ll all go back.”

With this strategy planned and agreed upon, they were able to give their full attention to the sofa again. “They’ll never get it through that little gate without destroying it,” Mrs. Bagot said. But when the men got to the gate they lifted the sofa high in the air and carried it triumphantly and arrived so quickly at the front door that Mrs. Bagot and the children barely had time to rush back and take up their positions by the stairs. The sofa filled the hall for a minute and then it began to sidle into the front sitting room. Mrs. Bagot hurried into the back sitting room and stood where she had stood watching the children that morning. “Facing the fireplace, please,” she said, which was unnecessary because there was no other way for the sofa to face.

The sofa looked very well in the room — much better even than she had expected. “It looks as though you had it made specially,” the big man said, and she forgot to look at him severely.

She saw the men to the front door, and she watched the van drive off, and then she went back to join Lily and Margaret in contemplating the sofa. They walked all around it, sat on it, stroked its back and sides, and said everything they could think of about it, and they continued to talk about it all through dinner, which they had in the kitchen as usual.

The Eldest Child

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