Three children are growing up, virtually unsupervised, on the mean back streets of London. Emotionally scarred by their circumstances, Brick, the eldest provides adventures and protection for Puddin' and for Tuppence, the youngest who is mute. The only sense of security they have is in an old cellar way in their neighborhood where they meet each morning for a ritual breakfast, consisting of shared remnants of last night's meal and the burning of their trash. They called it their "Place". Their lives change suddenly when a wealthy, impulsive, rather silly woman and her "small grey mouse of a husband" decide to adopt them and move them to their estate in Southwest England. Now in their country home, overwhelmed by the new environment and the people who now regulate their comings and goings, they seek their "Place" and find it in an old ruin in the deep woods on the grounds of the estate. The older boy, Brick, whose fertile imagination has filled their lives with stories of heroes and great leaders and given them what little knowledge they have, leads these adventure hungry children. We see their adoptive mother soften and mellow, their father expand and grow and everyone, whose lives they touch, changed by these charming waifs who finally find true security, and their "Place".