Tony Kytes is a young man who is very popular with the girls around him, but he is not particularly sharp. Imagine meeting an old friend who asks for a ride home in your car—what would you do? And if you then meet the girl you plan to marry, how would you handle it? Tony quickly finds himself entangled in a complex situation and at a loss for an escape. These stories are set in a nineteenth-century English village, but the themes of mistakes, confusions, and marriages in Hardy's stories are timeless and universal.