Twelve-year-old orphan Ladybird Lovell arrives from India to live with her spinster aunts, Priscilla and Dorinda Flint, and manages to keep them under her spell as she turns the household upside-down. The situation mirrors Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, published the previous year, but they're very different books. Sunnybrook is a thoroughly Victorian book, but this story looks forward to Wells' breezy style of the 20's and 30's. The biggest flaw in this tale is the characterization of the aunts: they're portrayed as stern and rigid, yet they melt in Ladybird's hands at the least provocation, even from the start of the story.