Penny Hallard has been brought up by her father, a kindly, conservative man, who is bewildered by the problems of an adolescent daughter and the attitude to life of the younger generation. Penny is suspicious of the friendship between her father and Ruth Cahill, her dead mother's friend, whose interference in her early upbringing, Penny has always resented. A wealthy bachelor Uncle and an adventurous woman painter make up the adult quartette whose middle-aged romances surround Penny and disturb her youthful idealism.