Rose thought Frank was very funny. Frank had found the rooms for them and he had given Hubert the key at the station. Rose had watched Hubert put the key carefully in his waistcoat pocket, and now she watched him take it out again. He was very self-conscious, and in his eagerness to open their door he stumbled over one of the suitcases he had put down, and he nearly fell through the doorway ahead of Rose, but Frank grabbed him and held him back, and Rose went in first.

“Ladies First!” Frank shouted, loud enough to rouse the whole neighborhood. They were all there laughing. Rose put her basket on the shaky round table that stood in the middle of the room, and she stood there looking around her while Hubert and Frank brought in the luggage. The scrap of thin carpeting under her feet was faded, and it was so worn that most of it was the same straw color as her basket, with traces of red and pink to show how bright it once had been. When everything had been brought in, Frank made a great display of trying to pick Hubert up and carry him around.

“This is a remarkable parcel, Madam,” he said to Rose, while Hubert struggled. “It has delusions of grandeur. It thinks it’s alive.”

Rose had never laughed so hard in her life. She saw Hubert watching her and admiring her, and she knew they were both showing off for her benefit. Then Frank suddenly got serious and took his watch out of his pocket and looked at it and said he had an important appointment, a matter of life and death, and that he was two days and ten minutes late already. He was outside and closing the door after himself while he was still talking, and he wouldn’t listen to Hubert’s invitation to stay a minute. Then he vanished and they heard him running down the stairs. Rose looked at Hubert.

“Frank’s a great man,” Hubert said, “but I’m glad he’s gone. Aren’t you? Aren’t you glad, Rose?”

“Yes,” Rose said, and then she turned and went quickly to the window, a small, square window that looked across Somerville Street to the tops of the houses beyond.

“It’s a lovely sky,” she said.

“Take off that old hat,” Hubert said. “You’re at home now.”

She had lifted the flimsy green net curtains that covered the windows while she was looking out, and as she raised her arms to take the pins out of her hat the curtains fell back to the wall and she saw that they were of unequal lengths.

“Look, one of these is too long,” she said. “I’ll have to even them up.”

She took her hands from her hat and lifted the curtains and stepped back, measuring them together at their hems.

“About an inch,” she said. “That should be right.”