Paul Manning, who narrates this powerful story of love and loss, has only recently left home to become clerk to the engineer of a new railway line, Mr Holdsworth. Knowing that some of his distant relatives, the Holmans, live nearby, Manning goes to visit them and becomes intimate with the family. In time, Manning introduces Holdsworth to them and the engineer and Phillis Holman fall in love, although neither declares their feelings to the other. Holdsworth is then sent by the railway company to work on a line in Canada, but he confides to Manning that it is his intention to return to England and ask for Phillis' hand in marriage. Called by some 'the most perfect story in English,' this idyllic, pastoral tale captures the emotions of young love with the perception of a consumate observer of the human condition.