Mademoiselle Bressac is a bossy spinster who manages "Le Clos", her estate, with an iron hand. But is she really a bad person? Her manners are abrupt but they only hide a heart of gold. Doesn't she bring up four orphans, Dominique, Fabien, Chantal and Jean? And as if it were not enough, she has accepted to educate another child, her niece Patricia, entrusted to her care by her irresponsible father. Thanks to her, the five young people have grown up in harmony and now they are about to find their place in society. Two of them, Jean and Patricia, who love each other, live only for the estate.

Marie, a young bourgeois and Jean, a cargo sailor have an affair, she becomes pregnant but he has to go back to the sea. Marie leaves for Paris where she meets Pierre and marries him. War breaks out, Jean and Pierre will befriend each other on the front.

The children born from a first marriage of a widower and a widower who have remarried do not get along. Frequent quarrels break out in the household which finally finds calm thanks to the presence of a new little girl.