noon
But they toted a vanload of it into closets and storerooms . Where the pictures came away they left staring spaces of unfaded wall-paper . Still , they were preferable to the pictures . By noon the women were exhausted . They washed their dust-smutted hands and faces and exclaimed upon the black water they left . But the exercise had given them appetite , and when Marie Louise locked the front door she felt all the comfort of a householder . She had a home of her very own to lock up , and though she had roamed through pleasures and palaces , she agreed that , be it ever so horrible , there 's no place like home .