The first day of spring has a profound affect on the Hilton family. The father, an accountant, finds himself unable to work, and when he tries to work, he is wooed by an actress whose taxes he is doing. The mother is mistaken by a friend's brother, who thinks she is the woman he is supposed to marry; when he finds out different, he decides to pursue her anyway. The eldest son mopes because he wants to "motor the Continent" and the father won't permit him to. The eldest daughter miserably laments the end of a romance with a married artist twenty years her elder. And the youngest moons dreamily in her morbid teen way about Dante Gabriel Rossetti. All of this in the space of one day.