After the school teacher, Miss July Lewisham, Caroline Croydon is the most popular woman in the village among the children of Bridbury. Her sweetshop Sweetie is paradise on earth. The things you can find there! Drawers full of sweets, glass jars with wrapped and unwrapped surprises and much more. There are children in the village, such as the seven of Maggie Redbridge owner of the toyshop and the three daughters of Jacky Enfield, the police officer’s wife, who are allowed to buy sweets from Caroline every week, But most have to earn their sweets by doing odd jobs.

But there are things to be found for adults too in Sweetie’s assortment. The smith Christopher Lambert’s love for Caroline's "pineapple rock" , "dad's herbals" or "fizzy fish" is as big as he himself is. During his work he always has something sweet in his mouth to drive away the gasses. Mary Sutton of restaurant "Eating Time" always buys bagsful of dairy butter mints from Caroline, supposedly for her customers, but actually for herself. Strangely enough, her husband Jack and their three daughters don’t eat sweets. 

They prefer to go to Gary's Greengrocery run by Gary Wickford to buy a nice apple or an exotic pineapple, which is sometimes brought by ship from southern Europe. And that despite the fact that Caroline's shop contains boiled sweets of every flavours, from cinnamon to mint, from pear to peach and from aniseed to apple.