Andy, the story follows the Duvitch family, Croatian immigrants whose physical appearance the narrator immediately marks as both "foreign" and poor. Though sicknesses typical of the period (typhoid, whooping cough, measles) and dire poverty afflict the family, they remain kind, optimistic, and surprisingly generous.[7]
The townspeople, however, have trouble looking beyond appearances. They harangue the Duvitch siblings, taunting them for everything from "the leaf, lard and black bread sandwiches they ate for lunch" to the "rag pickers’ clothes" they wear to school.
After the narrator Andy and his brother Tom poison some fish the Duvitches have caught, making them inedible, their father forces the boys to confess and administers punishment, part of which is facing their victims and owning up to their crime. "Father" goes a step further that ultimately eases the tension around the entire community. "It is high time," Tom and I heard Father say calmly, sanely, to Mother around noon next day when we woke up, "for this senseless feeling against the Duvitches to stop and I'm willing to do still more to stop it. Tonight we are having supper with them."
In time, the townspeople gradually accept the new arrivals, and the story ends on a note of unexpected generosity.