The impoverished Harlow family of New England is forced to take in summer boarders. Teenaged niece Tressie welcomes the change and promptly falls in love with a wealthy young guest named Norman Minot. Although Norman returns Tressie’s affection, he is driven away by a fortune-hunting mother who wants him to marry her daughter. Robert Kitteridge, a scheming artist friend of Norman's, takes Tressie on a sailboat outing, during which they narrowly escape death when their boat is rammed by a steamship. After being put ashore the next morning in Boston, MA, Robert takes Tressie to his studio and attempts to seduce her.

Idalene Nobbin attends a village dance but, due to the constant nagging of her mother, she believes herself to be a constitutional wallflower. By great luck she gets a dance with college football star Roy Duncan, although Roy has eyes for the village belle Prue Nickerson.

Ek is a disembodied spirit, required to wait his turn in the boring cosmos until he is allowed to inhabit an earthly body. Impatient, he sneaks off to earth to find a body and, after several failed attempts, finds Professor Ezra Botts, a timid old pedant and researcher of psychic phenomena. Life fairly well kicks Professor Botts around as it does all timid souls, and he gets little love or respect. But during an experimental trance, he is able to leave his body behind and at that moment, Ek sees his chance and slips in, taking over the professor's body. The "new" professor is energetic, charismatic, and dynamic, and from the limbo in which he floats, the real professor fears that Ek is going to wear out the tired old body before he, Botts, can return to it. And just how is he supposed to get back into his body, anyway?