In the dressing room of Chickie Buff, a lively little actress, Hugo Bonsor is rehearsing a proposal of marriage which he intends making to a lady named Oenone, when he is surprised by Osbert Bassington, Chickie's fiance. This worthy misinterprets the scene and rushes distraught from the room. Whereupon Chickie and Hugo cheer themselves up and go off to spend the evening together at a club, which is raided, thanks to the activities of the puritanical Earl of Tuckleford. This noble-spirited man is the father of Hugo's adored Oenone, a fact which makes the wild young man's suit seem quite hopeless. Hugo, accompanied by Chickie, and flying from the law on a motor-bicycle, arrives at Tuckleford Vicarage and finds his friend, the Vicar, out. Needing a change of clothes, he borrows the Vicar's clerical garments. Then he is visited by the police, who fail to recognise him; the local undretaker and his wife with twins to christen; Osbert, whose arrival necessitates Chickie disguising herself as the Bishop of Pago Pago; and finally the Vicar himself, who mistakes him for the new curate. In a quiet moment Hugo and Chickie try to escape, are captured by the police and dragged before the stern and moral Earl. And then Chickie recognizes in the stern old gentleman a saucy rip, who, disguised as Father Christmas, has smoked a cigarette with her on the stairs of the night club.