Horace asks his mother if he can go potato picking on the weekend when a young woman comes near the gate of their house. She asks if she can stay the night with them because her husband is a drunk and abusive. Horace is wary of the stranger, but his mother welcomes her in as the stranger is from Scotland like Horace’s mother is. Horace checks on his pet pig, Porkie, to make sure that the stranger doesn’t steal his pig. That evening he considers what to do for the rest of the day and thinks about all the places his friends hang out. He decides to walk into town and runs into a young girl he knows named Carrie. She jokes with him and asks him to buy her ice cream which he does on his mother’s account at the drug store.  The next day he gets into a wagon with his friends Carl and Ellsworth who are excited about the money they will make while potato picking. They pass by a group of hobos on the wagon and Ellsworth says he wishes he were a hobo, making Horace realize that Carl is smarter than Ellsworth. They also talk about how they will be paid by the row of potatoes they pick while the older men working get paid by the bushel, which they feel is unfair. They decide to pick rows next to each other so that they can talk while they work.  As they start, Horace is much faster than Carl or Ellsworth and has to talk to Sloppy Mayne, another boy who the three friends don’t like. They work for a while in the heat and they talk about how much the work hurts their backs. They all get fed a meal by their employer and then get back on a wagon going home, sleeping on the way there. They get back the next day and Horace pays for the ice cream that he bought two days before so his mother won’t know about it. When he gets back home he notices that the stranger who stayed with them is gone and he can’t find his pig. He thinks she might’ve stolen Porkie and he searches for his pig for a while until he finds Porkie tied up in a barn. He figures out that it’s the stranger's drunken husband who must’ve stolen him. He returns home and his mother tells him that the woman returned to her husband despite the abuse. Horace worries about Porkie and considers not going to work to make sure his pig is safe.