The action takes place in the bleak, overcrowded, and for many too small apartments in one of Copenhagen's bridge districts, where there are both good citizens, but also people who live a shadowy existence. Up in the attic, Mathilde lives alone with her little daughter Vibeke. She is the result of a coincidence, as is so often the case when a young girl from the provinces comes to the Capital. Mathilde comes from Vordingborg, she went to the city to look for work. At the boarding house where she stayed, she made a friend Ellen, a rather frivolous and indifferent young girl.