Nell Flynn is training to be a nurse and planning to marry her boyfriend when her mother dies leaving her younger sisters destitute. To save them from the workhouse Nell returns to the family home finding work at a biscuit factory. But then eight-year-old Roisin is admitted to hospital with rheumatic fever and 15-year-old Kate runs away. Nell is determined that one day the Dublin girls will be reunited and only then will she be free to follow her heart.