After a long absence from St. Petersburg, a young landowner Yeletskaya comes to her estate with her husband.

Nikolai Ivanovich Balagalaev, the leader of the local nobility, planned to finalize the protracted division of the estate between retired collegiate registrar Ferapont Bespandin and his sister Kaurova, an estate they had inherited. He invited the persons interested in the amicable division to breakfast. After long, to the point of exhaustion, bickering and persuasion, there seems to be an agreement and, it seems, the division will be completed, but not so. Kaurova struggles, and a whirlwind of absurd scandals, quarrels and misunderstandings picks up everyone even more strongly.