Summary
A luminous heiress, Janice Webster pirouettes through Manhattan’s marble corridors like a firefly trapped inside a mausoleum of ledgers. Her father’s death bequeaths her not to tenderness but to two custodial titans—Ethan Dexter, a glacier in spats, and Henry Jarvis, a velvet-gloved calculator—who cradle her fortune in the refrigerated vaults of Webster Trust until the stroke of her eighteenth birthday. Appalled by her midnight roller-skating in the boardroom and her habit of signing checks with watercolor daisies, the guardians decree that wedlock will sand down her iridescence; Dexter volunteers himself as the whetstone. Yet the moment he kneels, Winfield Jarvis—son, sybarite, and accidental mirror—slides a competing ring onto the same trembling finger. Janice, now doubly betrothed, seeks oxygen beside the teller’s cage where pale, poet-accountant Steven Peabody tallies columns of coins and dreams. When Steven eavesdrops on Dexter bragging that marriage equals annexation of the Webster millions, the banker claps the crusader into a cedar closet like a moth in a money-bag. Escape, rooftop sprint, and breathless arrival at the altar interrupt the grooms mid-scuffle; Janice, eyes blazing like struck matches, unfurls a posthumous letter in which her father brands both vice presidents as ‘double-entry ghouls.’ She pivots toward the teller who never counted her as an asset, and the final shot frames a kiss that rewrites the ledger in luminous red ink.
Synopsis
When Janice Webster's (Dorothy Gish) father dies and leaves her guardianship to Ethan Dexter and Henry Jarvis, the vice presidents of the Webster Trust Co., which holds her fortune until she reaches 18, her official fathers become alarmed by her quirky shenanigans. Deciding that marriage is the way to tame her, Dexter proposes and is accepted. Then Winfield Jarvis, Henry's son, proposes and is also accepted. In a muddle as to which to marry, Janice confides in bank teller Steven Peabody, who loves her himself. Later, Steven overhears Dexter boasting of his future control of the Webster millions, but before he can warn Janice, the banker locks Steven in the closet and goes to meet his bride-to-be. Steven escapes and arrives in time to find Dexter and Jarvis arguing over Janice who then reads aloud a letter written by her late father denouncing both vice presidents and announces that she will marry Steven.
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