“Who sent me a telegram,” Rosie went on.
“He sent you a telegram!” Mr. Mercaptan echoed.
“Changing the—the place we had fixed and telling me to meet him at this address.”
“Here?”
Rose nodded. “On the s—second floor,” she made it more precise.
“But I live on the second floor,” said Mr. Mercaptan. “You don’t mean to say your friend is also called Mercaptan and lives here too?”
Rosie smiled. “I don’t know what he’s called,” she said with a cool ironical carelessness that was genuinely grande dame.
“You don’t know his name?” Mr. Mercaptan gave a roar and a squeal of delighted laughter. “But that’s too good,” he said.
“S—second floor, he wrote in the telegram.” Rosie was now perfectly at her ease. “When I saw your name, I thought it was his name. I must say,” she added, looking sideways at Mr. Mercaptan and at once dropping the magnolia petals of her eyelids, “it seemed to me a very charming name.”
“You overwhelm me,” said Mr. Mercaptan, smiling all over his cheerful, snouty face. “As for your name—I am too discreet a galantuomo to ask. And, in any case, what does it matter? A rose by any other name....”