The tact and humor of Nora O'Conner enable her to win her way in the English boarding school and to learn some of life's broader lessons.

    Through school feuds and hockey matches, trials and tribulations, Jane emerges to prove that she is well able to stand on her own feet.

    The Marigolds belong to a school which has grown slack, and the new Head decrees that, school work coming first, the Marigolds must soon disband.

    Barbara has been expelled from Rossdale for cheating, but her friend Hilary who is going there for the first time and believes Barbara to be innocent, is determined to clear her name, no matter what it takes.

    Oh, and I may as well say at the beginning that this is a human document. I am writing it in tears and blood - so to speak - and I shall lock it up in my desk, where the family will find it after my death. Then they'll be sorry. They'll wish they had been nicer to me while I was yet alive.For, in the time before I went to school, they were not nice to me - and that's the truth. All my efforts to please were unavailing. I did my good Guide deed every day for the benefit of other people, and what was the result P Did my parents smile on me and reward me P Did my brothers and sisters vie with each other in praise of my devotion They did not. They merely remarked, when they discovered what I had done for them, Really, that child ought to be sent to school. She is growing unbearable..."

    This novel depicts young women engaged in serious study and research at a biology laboratory at the University of Chicago.