AllMovie

At 26, Mae Marsh was a bit too grown up to play a waifish orphan (Mary Pickford was pulling it off only because her audience was willing to suspend disbelief). That didn't stop her from playing the lead in this picture, adapted from the Kate Langley Bosher novel, Mary Cary. Mary Cary's mother was disowned by her family when she eloped with an actor. After both her parents die, Mary is taken to an orphanage. There, poor Mary is treated cruelly, but it never breaks her spirit, not even when she receives a flogging for sneaking over the asylum wall to play ball with one of the local boys. She knows she has relatives somewhere, and she locates them when she goes on an errand and overhears some people talking about her. She finds out that her grandfather is a highly respected judge and her father came from a noble British family. She writes a letter to her uncle and asks him to take her away from the orphanage. He shows up and gives her the nice treatment and fine clothes that she deserves. She also finds romance with the neighborhood boy, who promises to marry her when he grows up.