Simon Pepper lives as a miserly recluse since the death of his young wife thirty years earlier. He is attended by his secretary and lookalike Abner Quigley, and housekeeper Pansy Pooley, who hires her niece, Queenie, as her assistant. Believing she would be living with a wealthy aunt, Queenie is disillusioned with her new job, although she is befriended by Vivian Van Winkle, the heir to a noodle fortune and an amateur poet known as "Cocobola."