"A sofa, is it?" exclaimed the butler, coming forward. "I'd like to know who has been silly enough to make a present of a sofa to a family who have already more household goods than they know what to do with. They'll be sending in a porcelain bath-tub next," he added with a grunt, as he unbolted the second half of the front door to make room for a cumbrous piece of furniture, just then ascending the steps apparently upon four lusty legs. "Here, you fellows, wipe your feet and put it in the parlor, and when the family comes home I bet somebody'll get a blessing." The sofa was, in point of fact, a well-fed lounge, corpulent and plushy and be-flowered, and when, its wrappings removed, it occupied the center of the Livermore pink and white drawing-room, the Livermore bric-à-brac and bibelots and bijouterie appeared to turn a trifle pale and to shrink within themselves, as though a note of discord had distressed them. "Lord!" said the housemaid frankly, as she regarded the latest unwelcome acquisition, "but it is a beast!" "Sets the room off, don't it?" remarked the fattest and most optimistic of the furniture men, as he consulted a memorandum in his hat. "Come in handy, won't it, when the missus wants to snatch a nap in the afternoon?" The butler and the housemaid exchanged a glance of tolerant pity, but such benighted ignorance of social use was beyond enlightenment. "Best give it a good brush-up to bring out the colors," the optimist admonished, surveying his late burden admiringly. "I wouldn't touch it with the tongs," declared the housemaid, and the butler prophesied, "It won't stop long to gather dust where it is when the missus sets eyes on it once." "Well," moralized the other, with a comprehensive glance about the room, "it's certainly a fact that rich folks does come in for all the luck." And so saying he withdrew, accompanied by his mate, and the bolts were shot behind them. "Our dinner will be getting cold," observed the butler. "Go down, Mary Anne, and tell the cook I'm coming, and I'll bring down the decanters. That sherry's hardly fit to serve upstairs again." The housemaid sniffed. "Be careful, Mr. Bates," she cautioned him. "The old butler, Auguste, was discharged because he found so many bottles of champagne that were unfit to serve upstairs." "Auguste," rejoined the butler, "was a French duffer. He ought to have known that even broad-minded gentlemen always count champagne." "Shall we leave the lights all burning in the parlor?" asked the housemaid. "Certainly," replied Bates; "it wouldn't do for the missus to stumble over that thing in the dark." "Lord!" said the housemaid, with a parting glance across her shoulder. "Lord! but it _is_ a beast." "An out and out monstrosity," the butler agreed.