Will, a thirty-six-year-old London bachelor, undergoes a change in his outlook about marriage and children when he lies to join a single parents group in order to meet women, and becomes friends with a needy twelve-year-old named Marcus.

In tracing the parish boy's progress, Dickens did not write a topical satire on the workhouse system and the role of the 1834 New Poor Law in fostering criminality, he created a story about the survival of good, and the exploitation of violence.