Miss Patty travels with her sick aunt back to her small hometown, when she meets two other women, Miss Ellen and Cornelia, on the same train. Miss Ellen is returning to town to bury her mother, while Cornelia is returning to her husband after her own mother’s funeral. Each of them vaguely know the others, so they sit down for breakfast on the train, where they discuss each of their respective losses. Cornelia does not mourn her mother, because she disapproved of Cornelia's marriage to a Jewish man, while Miss Patty already is grieving the future loss of her aunt to illness, and Miss Ellen’s mother was the only family she had left. Together, the women attempt to reconcile this collective grief before they all exit to their separate fates.