“Oh, yes, Miss Helena!” and Martha looked almost angry for a moment, then she burst into tears and covered her face with her apron. “I couldn’t understand a single thing when I first came. I never had been anywhere to see anything, and Miss Pyne frightened me when she talked. It was you made me think I could ever learn. I wanted to keep the place, ’count of mother and the little boys; we’re dreadful hard pushed. Hepsy has been good in the kitchen; she said she ought to have patience with me, for she was awkward herself when she first came.” Helena laughed; she looked so pretty under the tasseled white curtains. “I dare say Hepsy tells the truth,” she said. “I wish you had told me about your mother. When I come again, some day we’ll drive up country, as you call it, to see her. Martha! I wish you would think of me sometimes after I go away. Won’t you promise?” and the bright young face suddenly grew grave. “I have hard times myself; I don’t always learn things that I ought to learn, I don’t always put things straight. I wish you wouldn’t forget me ever, and would just believe in me. I think it does help more than anything.” “I won’t forget,” said Martha slowly. “I shall think of you every day.” She spoke almost with indifference, as if she had been asked to dust a room, but she turned aside quickly and pulled the little mat under the hot water jug quite out of its former straightness; then she hastened away down the long white entry, weeping as she went. III. To lose out of sight the friend whom one has loved and lived to please is to lose joy out of life. But if love is true, there comes presently a higher joy of pleasing the ideal, that is to say, the perfect friend. The same old happiness is lifted to a higher level. As for Martha, the girl who stayed behind in Ashford, nobody’s life could seem duller to those who could not understand; she was slow of step, and her eyes were almost always downcast as if intent upon incessant toil; but they startled you when she looked up, with their shining light. She was capable of the happiness of holding fast to a great sentiment, the ineffable satisfaction of trying to please one whom she truly loved. She never thought of trying to make other people pleased with herself; all she lived for was to do the best she could for others, and to conform to an ideal, which grew at last to be like a saint’s vision, a heavenly figure painted upon the sky.