The suburban house of the Bakers' adjoins a recreation field, which is useful since football and cricket play a large part in the story. Peter, who works for Graham, brings his fiancee to the house and Graham, as usual, makes a bee line for her. However, it is Mrs. Baker's brother, Leonard, to whom Joan strays. Leonard, poetic, a fumbler, who moons around holding conversations with the garden gnome, has always roused the bullying Graham's malice and scorn, who is horrified when he catches the younger man very much with Joan. Joan and Mrs. Baker decide that Leonard must tell Peter at once about the relationship and he tries, half heartedly, to do so, and the result is wholly unexpected, as Peter's cricket and football supersede all other considerations in his sports mad mind.