The story centers on what happens to a woman and her son after her adventurer husband disappeared into the jungle searching for diamonds seven years before. He has just recently been declared dead, so her two hopeful suitors, a doctor and a door-to-door vacuum-cleaner salesman, are eagerly waiting to win her now-available hand. Until--hubby returns. The story is commented on from the afterlife by the husband's alcoholic ex-wife, a German officer whom the husband killed in the war, and a little girl who was killed by an ice-cream truck on her birthday.