“If I had a name like that,” cried Mrs. Valiant, suddenly losing all patience, “I would certainly get rid of it and change to a better.”

Mrs. Dismal was deeply offended, but whenever her warmhearted, if rather quick-tempered, neighbor became impatient she always reacted with martyr-like resignation. So now she said in a tone of patient reproach: “It is a very ancient and honorable name, Valiant. It has been credibly demonstrated to date back to before the Flood. There have been Dismal Forebodings for longer than can be reckoned.”

Mrs. Valiant laughed heartily at her friend’s absurdity, though this was one of the times when she felt she would dearly like to shake a little sense into the poor silly creature before her. But she had an inner reason, known only to herself and the Chief Shepherd, for bearing long with her unhappy neighbor and learning to accept her lovingly just as she was. So now she answered cheerfully, but tactlessly: “Well, the antediluvian Dismal Forebodings must have become extinct anyhow, for there were none of them in the Ark. I wonder who was foolish enough to found the family name again!”

Mrs. Dismal was now too offended to reply. She drew her shawl closer around her shoulders, shivered, and appeared to be unconscious that there was anyone beside herself in the cottage.

Mrs. Valiant’s conscience smote her. It was really dreadful the way she let her tongue run away with her when she had come on purpose to try to help her friend. She hurried to apologize, saying penitently: “Forgive me, Dismal dear, I know I ought not to have said that, but oh! how I wish you would let me help you out of this unhappy condition into which you have fallen, and persuade you to put off the spirit of dreariness, and to put on the garment of praise.”

Mrs. Dismal burst into tears. “How can you talk like that, Valiant—you are absolutely heartless. I am sure I was always cheerful and contented enough before, but now that all this cruel trouble has come upon me what can you expect! A desolate widow woman all these years, working myself to death to provide for my three unfortunate children,” (this was a bit of invention, Mrs. Dismal’s husband having left her a small but adequate annuity) “and to bring them up respectably and prepare them for happier homes of their own than ever fell to my lot. And now what has happened? You know, Valiant—you know perfectly well—yet you are heartless enough to stand there rebuking me for being miserable.

“My daughter Gloomy, deserted by her graceless husband, her position lost, put to shame before all her relatives and obliged to come creeping home to her widowed mother, she the daughter-in-law of Lord Fearing himself, with no one prepared to lift a finger to help her get her rights! And then poor Spiteful—to find herself married to a drunkard who beats and abuses her shamefully, forced to live in a miserable little attic, a poor and despised relative in the house of her cousins. And Craven,” (here she sobbed convulsively) “my darling Craven, my only son, wrongfully condemned on a trumped-up charge of assault and disorderly behavior, actually put in prison!