A struggling family—an elderly grandmother and her grandchildren—cope with poverty after displacement to an attic, sustaining themselves with small comforts while awaiting news of the children's soldier father. The narrative follows their efforts to raise money at a fair, encounters with charity and deceit, the father's wartime fate, and the consequences when an unscrupulous relative and other villains exploit their misfortune. Parallel threads trace the youths' resourcefulness, a newsboy's assistance, developing romances, confrontations with fraud and malice, and revelations that resolve social and financial threats, leading to alliances and eventual domestic stability.