Baines meets a girl-friend, Lucy Maitland, at the hunt ball.

His mother is coming to visit before going to stay with his sister so Jane poses as Lucy Maitland to put Mother off Harvey's new fiancee whilst Tom and Diana ham it up mercilessly pretending to be Baines' parents talking to Lucy. The result is that Lucy does not stay around and Jane has got her Baines back all to herself.

Living together is not the bed of roses that Tom and Diana were expecting. He criticizes her sloppiness and her funny little ways, such as feeding acorns to squirrels with a sling-shot. She decides to move out and goes to stay with Sarah to be a nanny to baby Diana but this is not her forte.

Tom misses her, especially when Geoffrey decides to move in with him again.

Baines is hiring Mr. Nakamura, a Japanese hotel consultant, to advise on the building of a new,space-saving wing to be built at Bayview - thereby enabling him to pack in more residents. Tom starts the Bayview Conservation Society, eventually enlisting Diana, to demonstrate that any such building would damage the wildlife and the natural environment, thus stopping the plan from going ahead.