Gwen's family is rich, but her parents ignore her and most of the servants push her around, so she is lonely and unhappy. Her father is concerned only with making money, and her mother cares only about her social position. But one day a servant's irresponsibility creates a crisis that causes everyone to rethink what is important to them.

Joe Merrill, son of the millionaire owner of a chain of 5 and 10 cent stores, poses as Joe Grant, and takes a job in the stockroom of one of his father’s stores, to prove that he can be a success without his father’s influence. There he meets stockroom girl Maggie Johnson, and they fall in love. This causes problems, because Mrs. Merrill had planned for her son to marry Millicent Rogers, a high society girl.

Dr. Harcourt's daughter, Edith, falls sick. While treating her, the doctor is summoned to the sickbed of a poor neighbor's daughter who is also gravely ill. The doctor is torn between his duty, and concern for his own daughter's welfare. Duty wins out and he rushes to the bedside of the neighbor's child, promising his distraught wife that he will return home as soon as possible. He finds the child near death. Meanwhile, Edith takes a turn for the worse and a servant is sent to bring him home. Dr. Harcourt is faced with the dilemma of returning to save his own child, or staying to save another. He stays. When the neighbor's child is out of danger, he returns home to find that his own daughter has died.

Angela maintains a coastal lighthouse in Italy, where she awaits the return of her brothers from the war. She learns they are casualties and takes solace in the arms of an American sailor washed ashore. However, the sailor turns out to be a German spy, and she is torn between her love for him and her realization that he is part of the enemy force that has destroyed her family.

When Pollyanna is orphaned, she's sent to live with her crotchety Aunt Polly. Pollyanna discovers that many of the people in her aunt's New England hometown are as ill-tempered as her aunt. But Pollyanna's incurable optimism - exemplified by her "glad game", in which she looks for the bright side of every situation - brings a change to the staid old community.

Rich artist David King sends his infant daughter Molly to an orphanage, then years later regrets it and tries to find her. She's sent to slave at a boarding house,and the mistress of the orphanage passes her niece off as Molly.

A young girl, stifling on her father's backwoods farm, is reinvigorated by the arrival of an army regiment, come to train in the area.