Upon returning home from school one day, Lotus Blossom, a Japanese orphan who lives on the island of Hilo in Hawaii and teaches at a native school, discovers Parker, nearly dead from hunger. Believing his story of a shipwreck, Lotus nurses him back to health and then, mistaking loneliness for love, agrees to marry her patient. Soon tiring of her, Parker deserts her and assumes a new identity.

The owner of a small rustic hotel marries a local widow, whereupon the couple sets up housekeeping with their respective grown sons. The hotelier's son is a budding thief, but it is the widow's son who is blamed for his half-brother's crimes. When the truth comes out, the widow patches up the tattered relationships between the father, his son and his stepson -- and it is the widow who rids the community of the "bad element" who led the thieving son astray.

Pretty Irish lass Pegeen O'Barry lives in a small fishing village on the cost with her kind but alcoholic father and her vicious stepmother Moll. When her father is killed during a drunken brawl, a stunned Pegeen wanders down to the shore in her grief. She is noticed by Sir Arthur Ormsby, an Englishman who just happens to be sailing his yacht up the coast. He takes a liking to her and before long she's moved into his estate. Things are going along swimmingly until Arthur's wastrel brother Guy shows up.

Angered by his son Jack's wild behavior, Mr. Bennett sends him to college on a limited allowance. Jack is engaged to Irma Brentwood, the daughter of his father's partner, however, Irma prefers upper classman Bruce Howard. At Jack's boardinghouse, Jack is kind to orphan Daisy Woods, the much-abused maid, who falls in love with him. After a football victory, Jack's fraternity goes to a burlesque theater, but finds that Howard's fraternity is already there. Following a rough house, Jack's fraternity kidnaps the showgirls for a party.

Mary Brenton, daughter of wealthy Anthony Brenton, marries a man her father doesn't approve of, and they become estranged. When she tries to return home, her father refuses to let her in. Her daughter, Angele, disguises herself as a Belgian war refugee and her grandfather--not knowing who she really is--takes her into his house and, eventually, into his heart.

When, on a prank, shimmy dancer Marcia Meadows visits bookworm Horace Tarbox in his Yale dormitory, Horace falls madly in love and follows her to New York where he and Marcia marry. Denounced by his wealthy father, Horace attempts to support Marcia through his writing, but all his manuscripts are rejected, and he is fired from every job.

Orphan Mary Wade, is the ward of a family of farmers who keep her busy with drudgery. Mr. Jenkins, the head of the household, makes advances to Mary, she flees to the city with her dog Zippy and lands in court for imitating a beggar who pretends to be blind.

At a party thrown at the Metcalf estate, the Marquise D'Irancy's Sultana diamond disappears when the lights go out during a power failure. Suspected of the crime is William Kirkland, the wastrel son of the wealthy Kirkland family, but William's sister Diana comes to his defense. Aiding her in the investigation is Clamp, a wandering peddler.

Chronically unable to meet the right man, Flora Fairbanks falls in love with John Markham, a young artist, while vacationing in France, and believes that her run of bad luck has ended. The Countess Olga Tcherny, however, also loves John, and, as she spies on the couple, plots her revenge on Flora.