While she still sat pondering upon all this, the King himself began to sing, and these are the words of the song which he taught her up there on the Mountain of Pomegranates:

There is one law by which we live,

“Love loves to give and give and give!”

And on this “royal law,” so named,

The universe itself is framed.

No lasting joy is anywhere

Save in the hearts of those who share.

Love yields a thousandfold and more

To those who practice love’s great law.

That love is far too weak and small

Which will love some but not love all.

If love to one it will decline,

’Tis human love and not divine.

Love cannot be content to rest

Till the beloved is fully blest.

Love leaps to succor all who fall,

And finds his joy in giving all.

When he had finished this song the King rose to his feet and said, “Now it is time to return to the lovely work of self-giving and sharing.” And with that he pointed down the mountain slopes, and then together they went leaping and bounding down the mountain on their “hinds’ feet,” down toward the little green carpet far below which was the Valley of Humiliation where their ministry of love was so much needed.

CHAPTER 3
Gloomy and Spiteful

Bitterness and his wife Murmuring were the proprietors of the village inn at Much-Trembling. It was a picturesque, many-gabled building standing among shady trees on a corner of the village green. On one side of the inn was a bowling lawn and on the other side was a pleasant tea garden lying along the bank of the river where there were boats for hire. The barroom was clean, freshly painted, and comfortable—an attractive meeting place for all the village cronies. Farmers from all over the valley gathered at the Much-Trembling Inn on market days, and Bitterness and his wife not only had a very prosperous business, but they prided themselves on running it very respectably indeed as a comfortable, up-to-date hotel, patronized by all “the best people,” including old Lord Fearing himself, who often gathered there with his friends in the private parlor.

Timid-Skulking, nicknamed Moody, a younger brother of Mrs. Murmuring, also lived at the inn and helped in the work. He had married Mrs. Dismal Forebodings’ daughter, Spiteful, but the marriage had turned out most unhappily, for Moody had the reputation of possessing the quickest and most uncertain temper in the village, and his wife, poor girl, the sharpest tongue. Only a short time before Grace and Glory returned to the valley, Moody had been sentenced to a term in prison for almost beating his young wife to death while he was under the influence of drink, and this just at a time when the whole village was already gossiping about Sir Coward Fearing’s desertion of his wife, Gloomy, who was Spiteful’s sister.

When she was first married, the Hon. Mrs. Coward Fearing had not often condescended to visit Spiteful at the village inn, but since the tragedy of her husband’s desertion, a common bond of misery and sorrow seemed to have drawn her to her sister and had worked a great change in the haughty Gloomy. Every day since her sister’s illness she had gone furtively, and as secretly as possible, to the attic to do what she could for her help and comfort. Outwardly, perhaps, that was not very much, for Gloomy had always despised housework and knew very little indeed about cleaning a room, cooking, or nursing. She had little spoken comfort to give either. She did everything in a silent, dreary way, even gloomier than her name. But even so, her daily visits were the one bright spot, if such it could be called, in her sister’s miserable existence; the feeling that one person at least in the world cared to be with her was like an anchor to the soul of the poor, forlorn girl.