The Spiderbrain family - may the reader forgive this name, but that's what people are called, and why shouldn't they be called that? - has moved from the city to the countryside. The family consists of a father, mother and four children, whose first names are Fritz, Wolfgang, Herzelinde and Henriette. The head of the family is a writer, not to say a poet. This poet gets himself and his loved ones through life with the fruits of his pen, which are not unpopular with newspapers and magazines, book publishers and radio stations. The profession of the poet Spiderbrain is not bound to a particular place, it can be practised from anywhere, because the postal service ensures in an exemplary manner that what Mr Spiderbrain's brain comes up with in the evening is already on the desks of the editorial offices the next morning. And so our poet has decided to live with his family in the good country air close to nature rather than in the haze of the city.

The four children of the poets feel at home in the countryside. The wide expanses of green meadows make better playgrounds than the courtyards wedged between tall houses. The village children in their unbent, fresh and coarse behaviour make wonderful playmates. The uninhibited light of the sun and the memorable face of a beautiful landscape make the children bright and free. There is only one thing that the spider-brain children find lacking when they compare the conditions in which they live with those of the villagers, namely that the farmers own milk-giving cows while their parents have to buy milk by the litre, that the farmers harvest grain from the fields while they have to go to the merchant for every kilo of flour, that the farmers can slaughter pigs while they have to bother the butcher. 

One day, Fritz, the eldest, twelve-year-old, enters the poet's room, where Father Spiderbrain - in his honour - works not only with his brain but also with his heart, and says: "Father, buy a sow!" "I'm a poet, not a cattle dealer," replies Father Spiderbrain, thinking that he has put his crown prince to shame with these words, but he is mistaken. "Even poets like to eat roast pork," philosophises Fritz. "That's right," says Father Spiderbrain, "we'll be buying another kilo of pork soon, but a whole pig is prohibitively expensive for a poet.

Fritz withdraws. He has long known that poets can't possibly have much money if they are real poets, and he also realises that you can't buy a pig without money. The fact that poets and poets' children cannot enjoy a pig like farmers and farmers' children seems to Fritz to be a glaring injustice, and because he - like most boys his age - has a pronounced sense of justice, this fact becomes an emergency that he has to remedy. Fritz Spinnenhirn thinks about the matter day and night and finally finds a solution, which he realises with youthful impetuosity. He has chosen his three siblings as helpers and they are enthusiastic about his intentions. They decide to act according to two principles when carrying out their plans: Firstly, to be tough, persistent and without false shame, and secondly, not to tell their parents, so that the joy and surprise for them will be all the greater afterwards.

First, the two boys Fritz and Wolfgang set their fretsaws to work and make four little wooden houses, each with a slit in the roof in place of the chimney. These slits are the only openings that lead inside the four little houses, everything else is firmly fitted together, nailed and glued. This means that nothing can get out of the little houses once it has got in; you have to break them open later if you want to enjoy their contents. The two girls Herzelinde and Henriette, nine and seven years old, paint the little houses with bright colours. The captions "Villa Fritz" and "Villa Wolfgang", "Villa Herzelinde" and "Villa Henriette" are emblazoned on each little house. They would have preferred to write "Sau -Sparkasse" on them, but they didn't, because otherwise their parents would have realised what they were playing.

Now the motto is to get as much content as possible into the little houses. When Fritz has to go to the post office for his father, he says "it costs ten pennies" and holds the "Villa Fritz" under his nose. Father Spiderbrain also usually throws ten pennies into the slot because he believes that children should be encouraged to be thrifty. You can almost always spare ten pennies. If Wolfgang sees an uncleaned bicycle somewhere, he tracks down the owner and offers to clean it for thirty pennies. He gets a lot of jobs because everyone likes to avoid such work. As he works cleanly, Wölfgang becomes a very busy man and soon no bicycle in the whole neighbourhood is a stranger to him. The "Villa Wolfgang" becomes increasingly important. Whenever Herzelinde has to dust or clean shoes, it costs ten pennies, which go into the slot of the "Villa Herzelinde". Mum Spiderbrain is of the same opinion as her husband when it comes to saving money. Henriette, the baby of the family, learns well at school. When she brings home an excellent grade, she asks her parents for a tasty reward, which then disappears into the belly of "Villa Henriette". She often receives this sounding reward from both her father and mother on Saturdays, because the little smarty-pants works on both independently of each other.

Whenever there is something to do in the village, the spider-brain children are there. They kindly but firmly refuse the food that is offered to them as payment for their services. They would get enough to eat at home. But they are happy to accept a few pennies for their savings bank. And they almost always get these pennies, because farmers in particular have a strong sense of thrift.

Fritz and Wolfgang, Herzelinde and Henriette never miss an opportunity to get small - and even better, larger - sums for their "villas". Their ambition grows, their sense of saving is trained, their attitude to life becomes more mature, their understanding of all kinds of work more pronounced, their relationship to money more thoughtful, they can suddenly understand their father when he is worried about bread. They have learnt that it is not easy to earn money, and they learn from this experience that one must have respect for any kind of hard work.

The "Villa Wolfgang" is full at first. However, its owner doesn't let up in his sparing but helps his little sister Henriette to fill up her "villa" too. Soon "Villa Fritz" is also full and, with all the help it can get, "Villa Herzelinde". After seven months, the children have made it. They can cover the roofs of their four savings banks. They have raised almost two hundred schillings. They themselves are amazed at this sum.

But even more surprised is the butcher, who deals in pigs and slaughters pigs on the premises of local farmers. When Fritz and Wolfgang, Herzelinde and Henriette visit him to buy a pig, he asks where they got the money and how they came up with this idea. He takes great pleasure in the children. The end of the story is that he gives the four children a splendid three-calf sow at cost price, and that he offers to slaughter this three-calf sow without asking for any money. However, the parents Spiderbrain are most surprised and delighted when the bristle-toothed animal bought by their children is brought into their house slaughtered. There is a slaughter party like never before. The parents are mighty proud of such children and the children themselves are also immensely proud of their fine achievement. And so the poet Spiderbrain has finally got a three-centred sow. And the four poet children are already building new and bigger savings bank houses because they have learnt the value of money and the meaning of saving.