The story opens at the end of a workday in Dublin. Farrington, a clerk, longs to leave work and go drinking with his friends, but he must copy out a long and tedious contract before he can go. To make matters worse, his boss has a vendetta against him because he overheard Farrington mimic his “North of Ireland” accent. The boss, Alleyne, calls Farrington into his office and berates him for being so slow to complete the copying; he threatens to report his ineffectiveness if he fails to complete it by the end of the day.
Angry and impatient, Farrington decides to sneak out of the office and have a quick drink before attempting to finish the project. He slinks off to a local pub, quickly drinks a small beer and whiskey, and returns to the office. On returning, the chief clerk asks Farrington to take the material to Alleyne’s office immediately, which he does, even though Farrington knows it to be incomplete—he hopes Alleyne won’t notice and he’ll be able to leave and enjoy his night.
Farrington returns to his desk and falls into a reverie of hot pubs and plentiful drink, unable to concentrate on his work, increasingly frustrated by how slowly the time is going by. He hopes against hope that he might be able to convince Alleyne to give him his paycheck early. Meanwhile, Alleyne himself has noticed that Farrington’s work is incomplete; he marches to the clerk’s desk with the glamorous Miss Delacour and berates Farrington furiously for his laziness. Farrington replies to this barrage with a withering witticism, much to Miss Delacour’s amusement and Alleyne’s fury.
Farrington is forced to apologize to Alleyne for his comment, though he dreads the inevitable consequences in the coming days. He is now more determined than ever to get drunk, even though he hasn’t managed to get his paycheck and is completely without money. He resorts to pawning his watch and heads to the pub. There, he meets his friends Nosey Flynn, O’Halloran, and Paddy Leonard and regales them of his tale of answering back to Alleyne, embellishing the details to emphasize his wit and sense of triumph. Another friend joins, and he repeats the story, all the while drinking beer and whiskey.
They move on the next pub, where Farrington is introduced to Weathers, a performer at a local theater. Farrington buys him several drinks, becoming increasingly angry that he Weathers doesn’t return the offer. The party then moves on to a third pub, where Farrington catches the eye of a well-dressed woman at another table. He tries to flirt with her with his gaze from across the room, but she eventually gets up and walks past him. Incensed and spurned, Farrington is then goaded to compete in an arm-wrestling match with Weathers. He loses not once, but twice.
The party disperse and Farrington heads home to Shelbourne Street, a lower-middle-class area in southern Dublin. When he gets home, the house quiet and dark. There is no wife to greet him, and his dinner is unmade. He calls for his wife, but is answered by his son Tom, who tells him that she’s at church. Farrington orders his son to prepare the dinner on the stove, but when he realizes that the stove-fire has been left to go out, his anger boils over and he grabs the boy to beat him. Tom pleads pitifully with his father not to hurt him, and promises to say Hail Marys for him.
