Things are finally growing smoothly on the Finn Family Farm. With the help of caretakers Joe and Alice Wong and farmer Samuel Brown, Charlotte Finn is starting to feel at home at the Santa Barbara County produce farm she inherited. But, all is not strawberries and cream: A blight is destroying young berry plants. Worse, another mysterious death is shaking Little Acorn. The victim is grizzled, cantankerous Linc Pierce, the only farmer in Little Acorn...

Bill decides to send Cissy to a private girls' school in Connecticut, and even though she would prefer to attend high school locally, she reluctantly agrees to go, thinking Bill wants to get her out of the way.

Restless, Bill takes a job in the Yutacan, but then starts to miss the family. It gets worse when he is led to believe, through miscommunication by phone, that Mr. French has the flu and Buffy and Jody are left to take care of him.

Bill Davis is ambivalent about taking on the responsibility of raising his niece Buffy after the death of his brother. After suggesting she attend boarding school in Switzerland, she runs away. Giles French, the Davis butler, brings her back.

Cissy thinks Bill is planning to get married to an old friend, but when her new friend tells her how her stepmothers sent her away, Cissy then suspects that the woman will send her and Buffy and Jody away.

The owner of a Middle East Delicacies store, upon learning Mr. French is unmarried and knowing he is wealthy, introduces him to his cousin, Nural Shpeni, who he and her brothers want Nural to marry.

When Bill gets Cissy her own phone and arranges for an interior decorator to redo Cissy's and Buffy's bedroom, Buffy becomes withdrawn as the changes appear to separate the room and, as a result, she fears Cissy is separating from her.

Buffy leaves Mrs. Beasley with Mr. French, who accidentally knocks the doll off the terrace. When Bill learns from Cissy the importance of Mrs. Beasley to Buffy, he goes on an earnest search to find the doll.

French congratulates a friend on his upcoming wedding, and makes the comment about how wonderful it will be to have a wife and home. Buffy overhears this and tells Jody they need to find French a wife.