The Fairy and the Waif (1915)

Viola Drayton (Minter) has a fascination for fairies, but real life intervenes when her father, a colonel (W.T. Carleton), is called off to the European War (that's what they called World War I in early 1915). He leaves Viola in the care of the Nevisons (Herbert Wilke and Ina Brookes) and gives them thirty thousand dollars to invest on her behalf. When word arrives that Drayton has been killed in battle, Mr. Nevison takes Viola's money for himself, but he squanders it and his wife has to take in boarders. Viola hates her life at the Nevisons so she runs away and gets a job at a theater playing...a fairy.