“The only way to git everythin’ in, is to fix ’em the way we do at the store—­set ’em close together.”

He spoke truly; and Sophronia, with a sigh, assented to such an arrangement, suggesting that we could rearrange the furniture afterward, and stipulating only that the lounge should be placed in the front of the room.  This done, there were three-and-a-half feet of space between the front of the lounge and the inside of the window-casings.

We can, at least, sit upon it and lose our souls in the dying glories of the sun upon the eternal hills, and—­“Gracious, Pierre, where’s the piano to go?”

Sure enough; and the piano was already at the door.  The senior truckman cast his professional eye at the vacant space, and spoke: 

“You can put it right there,” said he.  “There won’t be no room fur the stool to go behind it; but if you put the key-board to the front, an’ open the winder, you can stand outdoors an’ play.”

Sophronia eyed the senior truckman suspiciously for a moment, but not one of his honest facial muscles moved, so Sophronia exclaimed: 

“True.  And how romantic!”

While the piano was being placed I became conscious of some shocking language being used on the stairway.  Looking out I saw two truckmen and the headboard of our new bedstead inextricably mixed on the stairs.

“Why don’t you go on?” I asked.

The look which one of the truckmen gave me I shall not Forget until my dying day; the man’s companion remarked that when (qualified) fools bought furniture for such (doubly qualified) houses, they ought to have brains enough to get things small enough to get up the (trebly qualified) stairs.

I could not deny the logic of this statement, impious as were the qualifying adjectives which were used thereupon.  But something had to be done; we could not put the bedstead together upon the stairway and sleep upon it there, even were there not other articles of furniture imperatively demanding a right of way.

“Try to get it down again,” said I.

They tried, and, after one mighty effort, succeeded; they also brought down several square yards of ceiling plaster and the entire handrail of the stair.

“Think the ceilings of these rooms is high enough to let that bed stand up?” asked the senior truckman.

I hastily measured the height of the ceilings, and then of the bedstead, and found the latter nearly eighteen inches too high.  Then I called Sophronia:  the bedstead was of her selection, and was an elegant sample of fine woods and excessive ornamentation.  It was a precious bit of furniture, but time was precious, too.  The senior truckman suggested that the height of the bedstead might be reduced about two feet by the removal of the most lofty ornament, and that a healthy man could knock it off with his fist.

“Let it be done,” said Sophronia.  “What matter?  A king discrowned is still a king at heart.”