An explosives manufacturer suspects a young man is out to kill him. He calls in new parents Nick and Nora to sort things out.

　　Clarence Day (William Powell), is a benevolent despot of his 1880s New York City household. His wife Vinnie (Irene Dunne), is the real head of the household. The anecdotal story, encompassing such details as Clarence (Jimmy Lydon), the eldest son's romance with pretty out-of-towner Mary (Elizabeth Taylor). Vinnie tries to get her headstrong husband baptized, else he'll never be able to enter the Kingdom of God.

　　As told to a psychiatrist: Mr. Peabody, middle-aged Bostonian on vacation with his wife in the Caribbean, hears mysterious, wordless singing on an uninhabited rock in the bay. Fishing in the vicinity, he catches...a mermaid. He takes her home and, though she has no spoken language, falls in love with her. Of course, his wife won't believe that thing in the bathtub is anything but a large fish. Predictable complications follow in rather tame fashion.