Marylee Depue's father, John Cromwell Depue, refuses to improve the unsanitary living conditions in his tenements, although many of the tenants have become ill. John's wife Emily, who is involved in charity work only because it is fashionable among her friends, takes Marylee on an excursion through the tenements, where the child sees genuine suffering for the first time in her life. At a ball given by her mother, Marylee dresses as a slum child and collects money for the poor, and later that night she steals away to the tenement to visit Jones, whose wife has contracted typhoid. Determined to help the sick woman, Marylee steals a large basket of food from her own house and gives it to Jones, but he takes her back home when she becomes ill. Overjoyed to learn that Marylee's sickness was brought on by eating too many cakes with jam, John and Emily vow to lower the rents and clean up the tenements.—AFI