Frankie paces the kitchen floor even though she has a splinter in her foot. Finally she gets a butcher knife out of the drawer and sits down to extricate it. FrankieÂ’s foot is scarred from going barefoot so many summers. Her feet are so tough she can cut off the calluses without hurting herself. Frankie looks up and insists that Berenice tell her one more time how it was when Jarvis came with Janice. Berenice says the two came late in the morning when Frankie and John Henry were playing in the back yard. Frankie had run upstairs and came down later wearing an organdy dress and lipstick an inch thick from one ear to the next. The family had sat around the living room and then Jarvis and Janice took the train back to Winter Hill that afternoon.

Frankie is disappointed that Jarvis hadnÂ’t spent the night, but understands why he and Janice want to be together so much because he will soon be leaving for the war. Frankie asks Berenice to describe what they looked like. Berenice does so and then calls Frankie foolish for making her describe people that she had already seen. Frankie closes her eyes to imagine them and feels as if they are already going away from her. She feels like "the kitchen Frankie was an old hull left there at the table." She works on the splinter and tells Berenice that she thinks of Janice and Jarvis more as a picture than anything else. She thinks they are two of the prettiest people she has ever seen. Berenice worries that Frankie is hurting herself with the knife, but Frankie insists that she feels nothing.

Frankie changes things on this particular afternoon. She gets up and tells Berenice she knows what she will do. She will notify the police about Charles, the cat. She calls the police and tells them she is missing a Persian cat with short hair who goes by Charles and also, sometimes, by Charlina. When she returns to the kitchen, Berenice is giggling about her silliness in thinking the police will take her seriously. Berenice teases her about the possibility that the police now know her name and house number and will come and get her. Frankie takes it seriously and says she doesnÂ’t care anyway. She decides she would be better off in jail anyway.

She thinks of Janice and JarvisÂ’s progress on the train to Winter Hill. Frankie laughs suddenly about JarvisÂ’s joke about the local election. He said he wouldnÂ’t vote for the scoundrel C. P. MacDonald even if he were running for dog catcher. She remembers that Janice had assured her that she had gotten in the major portion of her growth by the time she was thirteen, so Frankie neednÂ’t worry about her height. Frankie goes on about what Janice said until Berenice interrupts her and tells her she is lying. She scolds Frankie for her habit of exaggerating conversations. She admits "a little" that Berenice is right, then she wants to know if she makes a good impression on people. Berenice tells her she did nothing when Janice and Jarvis came over but watch them silently. Frankie finally extricates the splinter and feels satisfied that anyone but her would have felt pain in the operation.

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