Two actors and a theater assistant live in modest circumstances in a rented apartment in Budapest. The two men constantly play cards with each other in symbolic stakes, and Béla Bognár's wife, Piri, runs the household. However, the atmosphere is good, and they quote dialogues appropriate to the given situation from the texts of their roles.

Ilonka, daughter of a former landowner, is a shop-assistant in her father's small pastry shop in Buda. In order to get a job for her fiancé, who is a young doctor, she befriends János, a painter and owner of the house.