Summary

The novel begins with straight narrative, as Dunston Ramsay describes the snowball fight that ends up causing Mrs. Dempster to deliver her baby eighty days early. Percy Boyd Staunton throws a snowball at Ramsay, but Ramsay ducks, and the snowball hits the preacher’s wife causing her to go into labor and also to lose her sanity somewhat.

After the original anecdote, the reader discovers the novel is framed as a memoir comprised of Dunston Ramsay explaining to the headmaster of the school system he himself has just retired from. He is explaining why he feels slighted by the accolades heaped on him at his retirement party, which did not mention his publications or intellectual interests. Instead, Ramsay feels he has been treated as a doddering old academic. What he is narrating takes place in his past, as Ramsay recalls Paul Dempster’s birth...