The story takes place on the island of Skiathos in the 1870s, approximately. The novella begins on Christmas Day when Aunt Achitsa appeared in the church with a new handkerchief and her two young grandchildren with new shoes. This caused great surprise as her poverty and struggle to raise her grandchildren were well known to everyone. The incidents explaining this are as follows:
Aunt Achitsa was a widow. Two of her sons were sailors who had drowned at sea, and the third had emigrated to America years ago without ever sending news. Her daughter had died during her second childbirth, leaving Aunt Achitsa to raise her two young orphaned grandchildren, 7-year-old Yeras and 4-year-old Patrona, as her irresponsible and unsuccessful son-in-law had abandoned them and likely remarried. To provide for the children she dearly loved, Aunt Achitsa took on various jobs, worked as a maid, gathered pumpkins, collected olive oil remnants from olive presses, gathered firewood for the winter, and during the harvest season, she traveled to Euboea to collect wheat in order to secure their bread. She managed somehow, but that year the region had been struck by scarcity and severe winter conditions, with snow falling since November. Despite her efforts, they reached the point of hunger. On December 23, the hearth in their humble home was cold, and she fed the children only the bread she had managed to procure with great effort before putting them to bed, promising them falsely that the next day Christ would bring them firewood, bread, and a cooking pot.
The next day, on Christmas Eve, the priest of the church came to her home and brought her a letter from her son in America, in which he wrote about his well-being and included ten pounds in British sterling as a money order.
Immediately, Aunt Achitsa went to the merchant, Mr. Margaritis, to receive the money. However, because the exact amount was not clearly stated in the letter, he tried to exploit her and would have succeeded in cashing it for only ten drachmas (as the schoolteacher interpreted the term "sterling"), most of which he intended to keep to cover old debts of her son-in-law and her late husband if a Syrian merchant hadn't appeared by chance. He immediately gave her nine British pounds when he saw the money order.