WHAT A CHANGED LIFE was orphaned Martitia's when she went to live with Quaker Docotr David Gardner, his wife Eunice and daughter Ruth, and his five tall sons. Martitia feared those five young men as she stared up at their immense height, feared the pranks they played upon her because she didn't know how to laugh at them.

But she liked them all and dreaded lest her stern, wealthy Uncle James would take her away from the kindly North Carolina household to his stuffy Richmond mansion. What, then, would be the outcome of the court proceedings whe Doctor David sought to adopt her, against the wishes of her uncle?

How Martitia learned to live and work and laugh like a Gardner, and how she chose the Gardner son to be her own bring to a romantic climax this story of a Southern girl in the 1830's.

From the dust jacket