The narrative follows Joey Graham, a scholarship pupil from a large family who leaves a marshland home to attend Redlands College and recounts her first term in the Lower School. Episodes trace household scarcity and postal anxieties, schoolroom rivalry, friendships with classmates such as Gabrielle, dormitory life in Blue Dorm, pranks and nocturnal adventures on the roofs, a theatrical production, a disciplinary court-martial, and athletic contests and elections. The plot emphasizes responsibility, loyalty to family, social adjustment, and the slow learning of leadership through setbacks. The tone mixes episodic school-life incidents with vivid local landscape description and a gently comic, coming-of-age sensibility.