Dick and Jane are married (The names have been changed to protect the innocent?): to each other. No, really, it could happen. The book starts out at a childs birthday party. Full of the babble of young minds. Dont fret! For the next twenty chapters we fast-forward to adulthood: during which they are planning a picnic to which they have inviting some friends (also married to each other). They are arriving on the same train for which Dick is writing an advertising brochure. He wonders if he should be writing fiction instead, but he finally realizes that he is. He invites his childhood enamorata to illustrate it: and, to attend the picnic. Jane retaliates by inviting a roving mendicant who just happens to hit them up for a piece of cake at the right time. He is also an artist; so we are led to believe. Dick and Jane realize that they are both married to the wrong person. For all of this, the picnic never comes off and we time warp back to the birthday party.