Jane Bell has lived on an old barge moored in the Thames with her feckless father and sister ever since their mother died, but she would prefer her life to be more like the movies -- reality is being courted by an inarticulate canal boatman, Fred Green, and cleaning the studio of a local artist, Bryan, on whom she has a hopeless crush that leads her to refuse Fred's offer of marriage. When her father loses his job and her sister takes up with a rich young gambler, she becomes engaged instead to Ernest, whose Communist beliefs represent the only fixed set of ideals in her life. But her position as Bryan's sometime model and muse is too precious to give up, even if he doesn't pay any attention to her... and even if Ernest resents it bitterly...