Mrs. Dismal Forebodings said not a word, for in truth she was almost stunned by the news, the dreadful news. Nothing, she felt, could be more untimely, more horrible, more humiliating, than the return of the wretched cripple they had all despised, and whose departure they had tried to thwart. Here she was, it seemed, healed, surrounded with friends, advanced to glory and honor, a member of the King’s household, now returning almost as a queen to the Valley where she had been a miserable, despised nobody.

Moreover, returning just in time to find her closest relatives in the most humiliating circumstance possible—her cousin Gloomy (who had married so well) now deserted by her husband, a destitute beggar in her mother’s cottage; Spiteful married to a drunkard who had nearly killed her, living a life of penurious misery in a tiny attic. And, worst of all, her cousin, Craven Fear, whom she had so insultingly refused to marry, now actually in prison. Could the return have been more untimely? Could, indeed, anything which she, Dismal Forebodings, might have imagined, be a greater calamity? “How true my almanac is!” said Mrs. Dismal to herself with a sinking of heart which even she had seldom before experienced. “A day of calamity indeed! No severer blow could have befallen me.”

She said not a word however. With an immense effort she bit back the bitter lamentations which almost escaped her lips, for she suddenly remembered that an aunt would scarcely be expected to bewail the fact that a crippled niece had now returned to her old home completely cured and holding a position in the King’s household. “If it had been any of our own relatives telling me the news,” thought Mrs. Dismal bitterly, “they would have understood my feelings perfectly and we could have lamented together, but Mrs. Valiant is quite different; certainly she would never understand.” So she sat in frozen silence.

“Come, Dismal,” said Mrs. Valiant persuasively, after waiting in vain for some expression of pleasure or interest from her neighbor; “do come along with me to the cottage and see for yourself the delightful truth of what I have told you. Come and welcome Grace and Glory and enjoy the happy fellowship with other friends in my house and forget for a little while your own grief in rejoicing with another.”

At that Mrs. Dismal at last found words. “Thank you, Valiant,” said she, “but nothing will persuade me to leave the cottage today, or to do anything so heartless as to seek personal enjoyment at a party while my daughters eat the bread of affliction and my son languishes in prison. As for Much-Afraid,” she continued, unable to conceal her bitterness any longer (she certainly was not going to call that girl by any new name the King might have chosen to bestow upon her), “as for Much-Afraid, a more undutiful and ungrateful niece cannot exist anywhere. If she chooses to return now to gloat over the misfortunes which have overtaken her relatives, it is only another example of her callous nature, and I for one, shall certainly not present her with an opportunity to do so. Pray return at once to your party, Valiant, and leave me to the solace of solitude in my misery.”