Robert, an eleven-year-old boy, lives with his father and aunt in a rundown house that he knows is all that his father can afford. The house is split into two sides, one where Robert and his family live, and the other abandoned. Robert spends his afternoons after school in a bedroom on the abandoned side, which he accesses through the broken cellar window. He reads books there, and also paints pictures, which he doesn’t like very much. Every evening, he waits on the steps of their house for his father to come home from work and walk with him inside. Robert’s aunt is a sweet woman, but Robert doesn’t like to spend time with her ever since she began to cry and tell him that he was lucky to be a child and that he will never be as happy as he is as a child. One day, Robert walks to school with his father and his father sees a pretty red flower in a graveyard. His father picks the flower and gives it to Robert to show to his botany teacher. Robert goes to school, where he has no friends, and gets praise from his teacher for the flower. However, at recess, a few kids start to bully him and call him Daisy because of the flower. After school, two kids steal his cap and keep it from him for a while before they throw it in the dirt. Robert goes to the abandoned house after school and begins to paint and wait for his father. When his father is supposed to come home, Robert starts to leave the abandoned house and runs into a hanging rope which frightens him in the cellar. He waits on the steps outside, but his father does not walk up the street with the other workers. Robert assumes the worst happened to his father, and he begins to cry and runs inside to tell his aunt. His aunt assures him that his father probably just missed the train home, and a little later his father comes home and says that he did, indeed, miss the train. He tells Robert to go wash his hands, and when Robert comes downstairs, he overhears his father tell his aunt that he wishes they were children again when they were happy. Distraught, Robert exits the house and cries hysterically as he goes to the abandoned side to think about how unhappy he is. He goes to the hanging rope that he had run into earlier and reaches for a loop in it.