Miss Ella Bishop (Martha Scott) is a teacher at Midwestern University. The story is told in flashback and takes place over many years, from the 1880s to the 1930s, showing her from her freshman year to her retirement as an old woman. At the beginning, she lives with her mother and her vixenish cousin Amy (Mary Anderson); she remembers when her father had a farm near the town. Ella is an inhibited girl whose frustration grows as she approaches womanhood. She dreams of becoming a teacher. When she graduates from Midwestern University, she is thrilled when its president, Professor Corcoran (Edmund Gwenn), offers her a position on the faculty.