John Peerybingle, a carrier, lives with his young wife Dot, their baby boy and their nanny Tilly Slowboy. A cricket chirps on the hearth and acts as a guardian angel to the family. The title creature is a sort of barometer of life at the home of John Peerybingle and his much younger wife Dot. When things go well, the cricket on the hearth chirps; it is silent when there is sorrow. One day a mysterious elderly stranger comes to visit and takes up lodging at Peerybingle's house for a few days. The jealous old man, Tackleton, poisons John's mind about Dot, but the cricket through its supernatural powers restores John's confidence and all ends happily. Dickens described the novel as "quiet and domestic innocent and pretty.".It is the third of Dickens's five Christmas books, preceded by A Christmas Carol (1843) and The Chimes (1844), and followed by The Battle of Life (1846) and The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain (1848).