Previously introduced in "The High House" fourteen-year-old Emma [of "Emma's Island"] goes with her aunt Patsy and Patsy's husband to live on a Scottish island. They all take to the life, and Emma feels she belongs both in her aunt's house and in the island community. When her aunt becomes pregnant, Emma first reacts by rejecting the whole fact, then when the baby arrives devotes herself slavishly to her. Her wish to live through other people rather than developing her own life is sympathetically handled, and her growing involvement with a student who visits the island brings her to realize the need to carry on with her schooling even though it means leaving the island. A sensitive study of an adolescent girl growing up after the death of both parents.