At Hemingford General Hospital, Alice Bancroft, a ward sister, meets   senior consultant surgeon Lowell North in circumstances which cause her considerable embarrassment:  at a reception on what would have been her wedding day she has with utter seriousness suggested to him that they should start a family together.  Her embarrassment increases when she learns that they are to work together.  Concerned that he is watching her in order to find fault she is determined to give him no cause for complaint, and she is startled by his immediately caring behaviour when she is attacked by a patient.

When she is asked by Olivia, a friend, if she will stay at their house to supervise two visiting children, Alice agrees.  However,  is dismayed to find that the children are the son and daughter of Lowell North.  He, sufficiently distant, offers to sort out a different arrangement.  Alice, hurt and lonely and very susceptible, finds him attractive but combative, and she is at pains to explain that her concern is for the children. The situation brings Alice and Lowell together but the presence of the children keeps a measure of discreet separation between them.

The children are clever and funny and they like Alice and she likes them. There are mishaps, and even a near disaster when Lowell’s small daughter is lost. However, pretty Alice, with her wide interests and her willingness to have a go at practically anything, is entirely reliable, and she and Lowell manage their odd arrangement extremely well.  She learns more about his wife’s death and explains a little about her broken engagement, helps with a birthday regatta and realises that she is deeply in love.

Olivia, now pregnant, returns suddenly.   Alice is no longer needed Alice is no longer needed, and Lowell makes no attempt to suggest otherwise.  Just as she is thinking he may be involved with someone else, he is thinking the same of her.  They quarrel over her supposed preoccupation with her friend Walker and Alice concludes that Lowell has no further interest in her.  However, when she next meets him he says that he would have been more than willing to honour the plan they had discussed at their first meeting.  Alice supposes that he no longer wishes to do so, tells him that she too would have been willing  and immediately leaves.

Reunited at the September Ball but prevented her from saying too much, it is only after the great Michaelmas concert that their misunderstandings about his love for her and her unconditional love for him are finally resolved