When the three Verdan sisters reluctantly decide to sell their ancestral farm in the Jura mountains, their eccentric hired man, Abdias Muller, determines that such a tragedy simply cannot be allowed. To save the roof over his head, he concocts a desperate, strictly logical scheme: he must immediately marry one of his mistresses. But which sister will accept the proposal of a man who argues about English plows and black cows? A delightful tale of rural obstinacy and the most practical of romances.