Father and Mother Lennox are a contented old couple, until daughter Jane comes home from college imbued with a passion for hygiene and an unswerving sense of duty toward them. With a book, "Old People and Their Care" as her guide, she puts them through a course of exercising "sprouts," orders hygienic meals, throws wide the windows to cold winds, and upsets their well-ordered comfort.

Pietro Roma, maker of plaster figures, is struggling for existence in one room in a tenement with his blind wife and their granddaughter Marianna, who markets her grandfather's products in a pushcart.

Jane Darling is an invalid, whose husband, Charles, was formerly a famous actor, but in his old age has come down to be doorkeeper at a theater. For his wife's happiness, Charles still lets her think he is a famous star.