In this volume, which follows the author's popular book "Tom Playfair", a new boy is just arriving at St. Maure's boarding school. Percy Wynn has grown up as the only boy in a family of 10 girls. He has never played with boys before, and no one looking at him for a moment would hesitate to set him down as "Mamma's darling". Tom and his friends befriend Percy, and attempt to repair his formal manners, and "make a boy of him".