Sport Sharewood and her younger brother Jeb live in a large, expensive house, but their parents are both cold, insensitive and self-centered.
While Sport and Jeb are sitting beside their swimming pool, Whitt, a young boy in a Huckleberry Finn straw hat pops up from the deep end of their pool and invites them to follow him. The children follow him by diving underwater only to come back up in a swimming hole bordering a rustic, simple homestead. An assortment of children are playing in the yard of the house. In contrast to their lavish home of neglect and insults, they are welcomed and loved from the moment they arrive at this humble children's paradise. There is only one adult there. "Aunt T." is a kind and patient elderly woman who loves children; she explains that she has many children there who came from parents who did not deserve them.