Ruby Sweitzer has never been courted. Living with her brother and sister-in law in the house she grew up in, she has accepted the life course set before her: shouldering her share of the housework while also serving as the village schoolteacher. So when the bishop delivers the news that she is not only being replaced by a younger woman, but is being sent to a far-off community to live with an aunt she doesn't know, she is devastated. A way out presents itself when the widowed father of one of her students proposes marriage, an arrangement she readily accepts. They don't love each other, but at least she made her own decision.