A headstrong young woman from California disrupts the decorous habits of her relatives during a European tour by insisting on travelling third class to see Spain and its people, setting up conflicts with a convention-bound mother and uneasy family members. The narrative traces their journey, social encounters, and domestic quarrels as her independence and taste for unorthodox experience clash with propriety, and it examines themes of class, cultural difference, personal autonomy, and the tensions between adventurous impulse and restrained society.