Grandma Ida brings her maid along when she comes to watch the house and the boys (Malcolm and Reese) during Hal and Lois and Dewey's short trip to St. Louis where Dewey will participate in a piano competition. Ida has decided that Reese is ready to become a man. Tradition, in Ida's home country, says that he must compete with all the boys of the village in a series of tests of strength and will. If he is successful, he gets the maid as his wife. In Reese's modern society, however, there is no village full of boys, so Malcolm is drawn into the competition.
—hawked-off