Content Warning: The source text includes racist language about Chinese people.

The novel opens on its protagonist, the recently orphaned heir Rose Campbell, who never knew her mother and is mourning the loss of her father, George. She is crying alone in the dark and dreary parlor of her great-aunts’ house, where she is staying until her new guardian, her father’s long-estranged brother Alec, returns. The house is on “Aunt Hill,” named after the collection of aunts (Jane, Clara, Jessie, and Myra) and great-aunts (Peace and Plenty) whose households are situated near each other. Since Rose’s return from boarding school a week ago, Aunt Peace and Plenty have tried to cheer morose little Rose up with gifts and visitors but are at a loss as to how to console the girl, who seems to them a “low-spirited butterfly” (1).

Rose discovers her own consolation when she follows the sound of a bird from the parlor down to the kitchen. She realizes it is not a mockingbird, as she suspected, but a 15-year-old servant girl named Phebe Moore who is singing while she scrubs the hearth. Rose is immediately delighted by Phebe’s talent and intrigued by her drastically different life circumstances.