Avsnitt 1

In the last years of Queen Victoria's reign, Ned, a middle-class schoolboy whose parents are working abroad, spends his Summer holiday in the Bedfordshire countryside with his great-uncle Silas. Silas is sixty, but very hearty and still attractive to women. He does odd jobs and poaches on the sly, to the horror of his long-suffering housekeeper Mrs. Betts . His son Abel is getting married, and, at the wedding reception, Silas recalls his own happy times with his late wife by singing her favourite song with his new daughter-in-law.