While traveling aboard a ship from New York to England, a man meets Mr. Charles Varnell, an older gentlemen who comes from the same hometown. During one of their last meetings on the ship, Charles speaks frankly to his new acquaintance about some of the families and people he remembers from their hometown.

He first talks about the Busbys, a family that had an awful flaw of always being dirty. Despite their wealth and glamorous attire, each member of the family was unclean or smelly in some way. Above all, Charles was disgusted by how the trait of being unclean was something common to the entire family, yet their small town tolerated it with grace. Next, Charles brings up the wealthy Jenkin family who shared the trait of being fat. Charles lumps the Busbys and the Jenkins together as two families who were so assured and privileged in their small town that they felt no need to correct flaws.

Charles then recounts his first love: a beautiful girl from the same town, Laura Nell Morris. In contrast to the Busbys and Jenkins, the Morris family was comprised of people who seemed utterly unrelated and dissimilar to each other, and Charles was most attracted by that quality. In his story, Charles formally proposes to Laura, but she rejects him because she feels too free-spirited for his serious and highbrow life. After hearing Charles criticize the Busbys and Jenkins, Laura mentions that the Morrises also share a terrible trait in common. She makes a bargain to marry him only if he figures out what the trait is, but Charles brushes it off as another joke and parts ways with the Morris family for over a year.

The next time he returns to visit is when Laura falls sick in 1911. Charles asks Mrs. Morris about the terrible family trait Laura mentioned, and she tearfully explains that her grandfather used to joke that all Morrises had to die eventually. Charles tells Laura about the trait he has discovered and reveals he cheated by asking someone. Laura says she now understands him better and passes away when he leaves. Charles has long since lost touch with the Morris family and rarely returns to their hometown.