More mystified than ever, Martha accompanied Helen into the next room. There was a large pier glass extending from floor to ceiling. Helen led the seamstress up to it, and standing beside her said, “There, Martha, there is the lady who invites you to be her companion.”
“But I see only yourself.”
“Well, and I am the one,” said Helen, smiling.
Then Helen explained to her astonished and delighted auditor the great change that had taken place in her circumstances. No longer obliged to toil for her daily bread, she would henceforth live in affluence.
“God has been very good to us, Martha,” she said, in conclusion. “I hope we shall not forget, in the happiness of the present, the poverty of the past. I hope we shall use His gift as He would have us.”
“Dear Helen, I am sure you will.”
“And you will come and live with me? I should be very lonely in this large house without a friend to lean upon. Dear Martha, it shall not be my fault if your future is not as sunny as your past has been dark.”
“How much happiness I shall owe you!” said Martha, with grateful tears.
“Hush, Martha,” said Helen, softly. “Do not thank me, for my happiness will be no less.”
That evening the household at Mother Morton’s was electrified by the announcement that Helen Ford had turned out a great heiress, and that Martha Grey was going to live with her. On the morrow Helen and her father transferred their home from their humble lodgings to Twenty-second Street.