Angelina Neatolini's wish for a pet, denied by her family on the grounds that pets are too messy, is overheard by a hard-of-hearing ladybug, who fills their tidy new home with assorted pests.
The townspeople in St. Clere, Kansas, are sure it will never work out when the neat and orderly spinster, Minnie McGranahan, takes her nine orphaned nieces and nephews into her home in 1920.