Jenny Blake is a rebel and the terror of Heathfield Childrens’ Home. She wins a scholarship to Crane House, but hates it so much she tries to get herself expelled. Claire Dobson takes her in hand.
Sara, the youngest of Professor Royle’s daughters, resents being sent to Highcrest School, where she is always being compared unfavourably with her four sisters, who are brilliant scholars. When Sandra, the third daughter, hears Miss Deane, the Headmistress, saying that she may not make Susan, the eldest, head girl, because of Sara’s behaviour, she tells their father.
Fourteen year old Lady Mary, daughter of the Earl and Countess of Barnstead, who are currently abroad, is in the care of her strict matron, Miss Snodgrass, and her tutor, Miss Snodgrass’s brother, Henry. Despite the Snodgrasses claim that she is an invalid, Mary plays the guitar in a jazz group that practises secretly in the castle dungeons. Mary discovers that the Snodgrasses intend having the castle deer slaughtered, before selling the deer park for the Earl at a profit to themselves.
