set in san francisco during the early 1900s, the film revolves around amarilly (mary pickford), the daughter of a widowed scrubwoman. amarilly is proud of her hard-working irish family, and takes care of her five roughhouse brothers. she is engaged to bartender terry mcgowan (william scott), who gets her a job as a cigarette girl in his cafe after a fire unfairly causes her to lose her job as a theater scrubwoman. while working as a cigarette girl, she meets gordon phillips (norman kerry), a handsome and wealthy but frivolous young man, who is a society sculptor.