A fourteen-year-old girl at a small girls' school receives an unexpected package addressed with an unfamiliar, old-fashioned family name, and the mystery of its origin unsettles her daily routine. Interactions with roommates, classmates, and the kindly but formal principal frame life in the boarding-school setting as she wonders whether the box holds clues to her ancestry. The account traces her curiosity and the small domestic details of school life while she waits for an opportunity to investigate the parcel and consider what it might reveal about her identity.