Arkasha Pryakhin, the son of a cook, is accepted by the "ladies' committee" as a free pupil at the gymnasium. Treasury discipline, reigning in this educational institution, methodically kills in students a genuine love of knowledge. Gymnasium students, resisting the soulless school system, invent all sorts of pranks, sometimes very evil. Once, when Arkady refused to name the perpetrator of the mischief, he was expelled from the gymnasium.