This family story tells of the delights and dilemmas of the Nudds, who spend their summers at Whitebeach Camp in the Adirondacks.
The story's title refers to someone asking, each year, if they "remember the day the pig fell into the well," then others "take their familiar parts, like those families who sing Gilbert and Sullivan," and recount events of that day as well as many others.
Mr. Nudd and Aunt Martha swim to shore after their boat sinks.
When the family returns to the camp, Mrs. Nudd asks herself: "What had made the summer always an island .
Why should these good and gentle people who surrounded her seem likes the figures in a tragedy?"
Cheever ends the story with his usual masterly prose: "It had begun to blow outside, and the house creaked gently, like a hull when the wind takes up the sail.