Each of his daughters responds in a distinctively different way to the circumstances of their lives, forcing Roger into attempting to calm the increasingly challenging family disputes that erupt.

He is driven by his wife's dying request to remain close to their three daughters, yet he feels very distant from them—this despite the fact that the younger two (Deborah, a school principal, and Laura) live in the family home with him, and Edith, who is married with four children, visits him regularly.

Deborah works constantly at her school, and spends her free hours agitating for reforms and financial support to help the families living in the tenements.

He takes a crippled Irish boy named John into his care, providing him with lodging and a job in Roger's news clipping office downtown.

Roger conspires with his daughter Edith and her husband Bruce to pressure Deborah, and she eventually accepts Allan's proposal (with the caveat that they wait until the end of the school year, so that a long honeymoon in Europe can be enjoyed).

As a result, he can barely afford to support the family, taking out a mortgage on the home to make ends meet, and Deborah chooses to delay her wedding again until the spring.

When Roger learns that Deborah has ended her engagement to Allan Baird, he intervenes, informing her that he is fatally ill, and pleading with her to make a life for herself beyond her school.

After she agrees to marry Allan, Roger finds good fortune at last: John, the Irish boy who works for him, discovers a new source of clients and saves the business (and with it, the family home).

The Oakland Tribune, in its review on May 27, 1917, wrote "in this story of Roger Gale's family, Ernest Poole has pictured remarkably well present-day Americans.