Little Meena's Romance (1916)

Meena Bauer is the heroine of this romance of a Pennsylvania Dutch girl, who is loved by the son of a Mennonite family. Meena treats Jacob as a joke in spite of the arrangement their parents have made that they should wed. The Mennonite simplicity has no charms for Meena, who proceeds to fall in love with Count Fredrick von Ritz, who is temporarily out of funds and comes to the little Pennsylvania town as a canvasser for a clothes wringer. Meena wants her father to buy one, but the latter believes that woman's hands were made for that work. Von Ritz next goes to the house of the town constable, where he is arrested for peddling without a license. Arraigned before Squire Bauer the prisoner is fined. He cannot pay and faces jail until Meena suggests that he be allowed to sell wringers until he makes enough to pay the fine. In partnership the count and Meena go and soon sales are brisk. Now comes the time when von Ritz receives a check from his estate and with sad farewell of Meena he returns to New York. Soon Meena follows, her father having died, leaving much property, to live with relatives in the metropolis. Here she finds many servants to do the work but they are an unclean lot and Meena takes a scrubbing assignment and is busily at work on the front steps when the count comes along with a present for her cousin. He thinks she is working out: she thinks he is canvassing with a new line. They meet often and one night von Ritz takes her to a noisy resort near the city. Before they return they have stopped at the minister's across the road. She does not return home and search the next morning finds her in her new apartments. Only then do the newlyweds discover each other's true identity. Von Ritz has married a rich wife and little Meena is a countess.