Dimsie Maitland has left school, and the future seems anything but promising. Her father has recently died, and her plans for a medical career have to be abandoned when she sees how much her mother now needs her companionship - especially as their new home is to be in a remote lochside cottage in Scotland.

But the enterprising Dimsie thinks up an alternative career for herself, as a "herb doctor", growing and using herbs for medical purposes.

And her sympathy and naturally sunny temperament soon win her friends among her new neighbours: young Lintie, the orphan; Miss Withers, Lintie's guardian; even the Ogre, the misanthropic author. Her schoolfriends, too, come to stay - Pam, Erica and Jean, all co-members of the Anti-Soppist League at Jane's. To Dimsie's horror, however, she discovers that Pam appears to have turned into a Soppist she has fallen in love!

But gradually Dimsie comes to understand what has happened to Pam - for she herself falls victim to the same disease, thereby learning both the problems and the pleasures of "growing up".

This is the sixth in the series of Dimsie books by Dorita Fairlie Bruce.

ISBN: 0 903445 91 3
285pp Hardback
Our RRP £6.95