The Stepmother

When the two little daughters of a young widower are told that he is preparing to bring up to the house to see them, a young lady who is to be their new mamma, they are at once plunged into the depths of despair. They feel that their home will be no longer bearable if they are to have a stepmother, so they run away to go out in the world to earn their own living. Their father is very much worried as well as indignant at their departure. He sets the police at work to locate them, and when they are found, determined to bring them home, and teach them once for all that he is master in his own house. But this is where the prospective stepmother, who is a practical business woman and a diplomat, shows her good sense. She persuades the father to allow her to win the girls over in her own way. This she does by taking a room in the same poor lodging house to which the girls have fled. Here she introduces herself to them as the lodger across the hall, and the girls, in a short time, grow to love her dearly and to rely entirely on her judgment. She arranges with them to become reconciled to their father, and assures them that she knows he would not marry if they did not desire it. The girls go back to their home, thoroughly penitent, but full of lowing accounts of their charming new friend, from whom they exact a promise that she will come to see them often. They finally decide that home would be much happier if she were there all the time, so they sternly command their father to marry "their lady" unless he wishes to incur the everlasting displeasure of his daughters. Father, with seeming reluctance, consents, and all family discord is at an end. - IMDb