lEmily Bennett arrives in Palm Beach from a midwestern farm. Covered with soot from a tugboat, she is hustled into a jim crow bus by a bellboy, who refuses her tip but slips her a card suggesting that they meet later. Her aunts, Jerry and Beatrice, accompanied by society millionaire Jack Trotter and Julia, his companion, fail to recognize her until she wipes her nose with a handkerchief. Following several hours of hectic activity, the aunts struggle to transform Emily into a society debutante. When she is invited to christen Jack's motorboat, she nearly falls overboard, and later she discovers some bootleggers loading their wares into the boat. After a hair-raising ride, she is set adrift and is forced to operate the boat alone; eventually she succeeds in returning the craft to the race course, and through sheer luck she wins the race and Jack as well.