John Humperdink Stover, otherwise known as "The Varmint" for his pestiferousness or as "Dink" when in special favor, was expelled from a boarding school and sent to Lawrenceville Academy. On the stage on the way to the school he meets a silent man whom Dink sizes up for a salesman and he proceeds to wax eloquent on the subject of his past career and the reason he was expelled from his previous school.

During a raging Montana snowstorm, Doctor Jim Barnes collapses at Esther Anderson's cabin door. Esther offers Jim refuge, but when he discovers that their food supplies are running dangerously low, he braves the journey into town in order to replenish them. On the way, he is overcome with exhaustion and fails to return. Esther, unaware of Jim's condition and abused by her stepfather, joins a theatrical troop and leaves home.

Lindy, the lone Black girl in her class, is mostly ostracized by her classmates. When Lindy emerges as a heroine during a school fire, attitudes change.

Irma is waiting for her escort to take her to a party when she falls asleep and has the most terrible dream. She dreams that she is a poor little girl in the country and has to do all the chores. She gets into all kinds of trouble helping the other children and finally falls in the brook. But just as she is bewailing her fate her mother wakes her and says that Bennie has come to take her to the party. The dream is over and Irma is glad that it was only a dream.

A girl nicknamed "The Weed" lives with her foster parents in their mountain cabin and frequently visits a nearby health resort to sell milk and eggs. On one of her excursions, she befriends a cantankerous old millionaire, George Bassett, who later bequeaths to her his entire estate. Ralph Long's car plunges down an embankment, and he is dragged from the wreckage and looked after by the Weed, who soon captivates him with her charm and ingenuousness. While he is in the hospital, however, the lecherous Kenneth Stewart snaps a photo of the girl swimming in the nude in a mountain pool and hangs an enlargement of it in his club.