Summary
A porcelain-skinned heiress, fresh from her father’s funeral pyre in Saigon, docks in San Francisco disguised as a giddy child; she intends to torment her appointed guardian—a stodgy botanist who still believes in parasols, stamp-collecting, and pre-war etiquette—until he begs for annulment of the wardship. Instead of crinolines she swathes herself in sailor suits, chews bubble-gum, and punctuates every syllable with a hopscotch skip, turning his Tudor mansion into a carnival of shrieks, broken Ming vases, and midnight ukulele raids. The ruse curdles when she unmasks the fiancée—an orchidaceous socialite whose laughter tinkles like counterfeit coin—as a fortune-hunter grazing simultaneously on the guardian’s bank account and on his octogenarian uncle’s plate-gold arteries. To detonate this sugar-coated scam, the pseudo-adolescent metamorphoses again: kohl-rimmed gaze, dropped waists, cigarette holders, becoming a siren who could sell sin in a Sunday-school corridor. In the ensuing tango of masks—child, coquette, avenger—she ricochets between nursery and boudoir until every pretense shatters like crystal under a stiletto. When the dust settles, only one appetite remains undisguised: the guardian’s realization that the woman he sought to pension off is the only partner who can match his heartbeat to hers.
Synopsis
When noted scientist John Vandam dies in the Orient, he leaves the guardianship of his eighteen-year-old daughter to his old friend Sandy Verrall. Sandy believes that Eliza is a little girl and so prepares for the arrival of a child. Displeased with the situation, Eliza decides to dress and act like a kid so that Sandy will tire of her and send her away. Eliza does everything she can to annoy Sandy, but when she detects that his fiancée Vera is only after his money, Eliza also discovers that she has fallen in love with her guardian. In an effort to expose Vera's avaricious nature, Eliza vamps Sandy's rich Uncle Gregory, whom Vera is also chasing. Sandy then realizes Vera's fickleness and his love for Eliza, and the two marry.
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