Farmer Mårten Esbjörnsson has three adult sons who all want to find a wife to marry. However, all the young women of the neighborhood seem to be less than perfect.

Kalle Jeppson is the joyful owner of a rural inn, "Spången" (The Footbridge). His only problems are all the bylaws that makes it difficult to have a quiet drink and the shrew of his wife who is always nagging on him. Kalle is afraid to tell her that Karin the maid is really his daughter from the days before their marriage.

Two sailors, Lasse and Karl Gustav, float ashore after a shipwreck. Visiting a castle a baron ask them to help him lay his hands on an inheritance by Karl Gustav posing as the heir of the castle.

Baron Brusenhielm at castle Tröstehult in Skåne dislikes how his young son Karl Oscar is playing “mother and father” with the tenant’s daughter Ann-Marie, as he anticipates the beginning of a future misalliance. Years pass, and Karl Oscar is about to graduate high school. He pretends to study church history but reads in fact “The Seducer’s Diary” and thinks of Ann-Marie, who is now grown up into a woman.

Butcher Charles Svensson (Thor Modéen) bets on the horses and wins the jackpot. He finds high society is not immediately appreciative of the newly rich.