Three-year-old Lily is kidnapped from her wealthy family by two criminals who plan to return her for the reward money. Instead, when the two leave her alone by the side of the road so they can get drunk, Lily is discovered by John Randal, a young blacksmith who lives in the small town of Markwood. John takes her back to the cottage he shares with his mother, who raises Lily as her own daughter.
John's Lily contains examples of:
- Break-Up/Make-Up Scenario: When Lily is six, John forbids her from going to Carsham Fair because he knows she comes from a higher background than anyone else in Markwood and wants to protect her from bad influences. John's fiancée Mary's stepmother, Mrs. Alfrick, takes Lily to the fair anyway. The two kidnappers recognise her, lure her away from the others, and grab her. When John finds out, he thinks Mary took Lily to the fair and breaks off the engagement, and Mary is too proud to correct him. Lily is rescued the next day when the kidnappers briefly leave her alone at the train station and Mr. and Mrs. Bland recognise her and take her back to Markwood, but John and Mary don't mend their relationship until fifteen months later, when Mary thinks John's mother is dying.
- Comforting Comforter: Hours before John finds Lily by the road, he encounters her and her kidnappers, who are posing as her parents, on a train. While the kidnappers doze, Lily climbs into John's lap and falls asleep. He covers her with the shawl she left on her seat.
- Distant Finale: The last chapter jumps ahead seven years and has fourteen-year-old Lily going back to Markwood to visit the Randals and meeting John and Mary's five-year-old daughter, whom they named after her.
- Fell Asleep Crying: After Lily is abducted for the second time, she cries herself to sleep in the filthy room in the back of a public-house where the kidnappers are staying.
- Karma Houdini: The kidnappers are never arrested.
- Love-Obstructing Parents: Mary Alfrick's father and stepmother try to stop her from marrying John so she can work around the house and take care of her younger half-siblings. It doesn't make any difference - after John and Mary break up, Mary spends fifteen months working at an orphanage. Nine-year-old Lizzie, the oldest of her half-siblings, mostly takes over her role.
- Missing Child: Lily is missing from her original family during her time in Markwood. Also, she goes missing from the Randals when she is kidnapped for the second time.
- Orphan's Plot Trinket: Lily wears a locket engraved with the letter L that contains a lock of dark hair from her dead mother. When Lily is six, the kidnappers see her at Carsham Fair and recognise the locket, and when her biological father comes to town and recognizes her a year later, the locket confirms her identity.
- Spoiled Sweet: Lily is a kind and helpful girl, even though John is criticised for overindulging her.
- Wicked Stepmother: Mary's mother died when she was a child, and her father remarried a woman who openly dislikes and constantly insults Mary while making her do most of the household work. She's also cruel to her biological children, whom she alternately spoils and abuses.
