The Major and the Minor

Tired of being hit on by leches no matter what job she embarks on, street-wise Susan Applegate, having been in New York City for a year, decides to go home to Stevenson, Iowa and accept the standing marriage proposal of Will Duffy, despite she not truly being in love with him. Learning that she doesn't have the full train fare for the trip home, she decides, seeing some children at the station, to disguise herself as twelve year old "Su-Su" Applegate to travel on a child's half fare. She has to keep up the ruse until she arrives home, she being able to fool most people she encounters, while she needs to evade those, especially in authority, who know she's not twelve and thus is committing fraud. Someone who she meets in the former category is Major Philip Kirby, who is getting off at High Creek, Indiana where he teaches as the Wallace Military Institute. Due to the circumstance of a blockage on the rail line, Susan is forced to stay in High Creek for a few days, where she will have to continue the ruse longer than she wanted, especially as Philip has arranged for her to stay with his fiancee Pamela Hill's family, she the daughter of the school's headmaster, Colonel Oliver Hill. Complicating matters is that all the teenage cadets at the institute fall instantly in love with Su-Su despite all the other girls in town trying to appear more grown up than they are, and Susan in turn falling in love with Philip, who is trying to get back into active service, especially as he can foresee the US entering the war, with Pamela secretly doing what she can to thwart Philip's wants in this regard for her own selfish wants in seeing their future married life together in non-battle bliss.