On New Year's Eve, upset that she did not get to throw the engagement party she was promised, Linda refuses to come downstairs. Julia sends Johnny to get her, and he finds her and Ned in "the playroom", the one truly human room in the enormous and over-built Park Avenue mansion. They are with Johnny's off-beat friends, Professor Nick Potter (Edward Everett Horton) and his wife Susan (Jean Dixon), who had gotten lost in the house and serendipitously ended up there. The group spends a joyful time together, and Julia and Edward Sr. find them just as Johnny and Linda are completing a tumbling trick.