The heroine here, Jill Mariner, is a sweet-natured and wealthy young woman who, at the opening, is engaged to an MP, the baronet Sir Derek Underhill.

We follow her through an adventure with a parrot, a policeman and the colourful proletariat; financial disaster; a broken engagement; an awkward stay with some grasping relatives; employment as a chorus girl; and the finding of true love.

Other characters include wealthy, dimwitted clubman Freddie Rooke and ruggedly attractive writer Wally Mason (both childhood friends of Jill's); her financially inept but charming uncle Major Christopher Selby; Sir Derek's domineering mother, Lady Underhill; Jill's unpleasant relatives on Long Island, New York, Elmer, Julia and Tibby Mariner; Drones Club member Algy Martyn; various chorus girls, composers and other theatrical types; and miscellaneous servants.

George Bevan, composer hero of Wodehouse's previous work A Damsel in Distress, receives a passing mention, as does an unspecified member of the Threepwood family.

The dust jacket of the UK first edition published by Herbert Jenkins was designed by Edmund Blampied.