A teenage girl reflects on her emotional growth, remembering episodes in which her love, fear, anger were not always under control, and decides not to go "park" with her boyfriend.
Two small boys are playing in a wood. The younger boy has a revolver and, not understanding that the gun differs from his toy pistol, plays 'highwayman' on the road and holds up a cyclist; the gun goes off, killing the cyclist.
Anu and Binay love each other and wish to get married but face opposition from her greedy uncle. They decide to elope but are caught and separated due to unforeseen circumstances.
Mr. Gray is the new Resident in Charge of the Welcome Islands in the Indian Ocean. The Islands are full of life, but the only other Europeans are the "sanctimonious, psalm-singing" brother-sister missionary team of Martha and Owen Jordans, and the Honourable Ted - a hard-drinking, womanizing social outcast whose English family pays him to stay away.