Her cousin Gloomy put both arms around her neck and kissed her twice without saying a word, then took her mother’s hand and on they went to the trysting place to meet the Shepherd.

Grace and Glory hurried toward the village thinking of Spiteful left behind in the dreary attic. How would she manage now without the cheer of the daily visits of her sister and mother? What must she be feeling at being left behind?

She found Spiteful, who was still weak and not yet fully recovered, moving about the miserable attic and singing a little song with a look of wonderful peace and content upon her face. At first Grace and Glory hardly knew what to say.

“Did you meet my mother and Gloomy on your way here, dear Grace and Glory?” asked Spiteful, kissing her affectionately.

“Yes,” she answered, “I met them near the trysting place.”

Spiteful nodded. “Yes,” she said happily, “they have gone with the Shepherd. He is going to take them to the High Places. It is too wonderful and lovely for words!”

Grace and Glory looked at her, still unable to say a word.

“I know what you are thinking,” said Spiteful with a gentle and understanding little smile. “You are wondering about me and how I can bear to be left behind in this attic.”

Grace and Glory nodded, still without speaking. Then Spiteful said softly: “I couldn’t go with them, you know, because in a few days’ time my husband will be coming out of prison, and there would be no one to welcome him or to care for him. But, Grace and Glory, the Shepherd has told me that there is a way to the High Places even from this attic, and that though I cannot make the journey with my mother and sister, yet I may go there just as surely by this other way. So, you see, I am not left behind!”

Grace and Glory looked round the miserable attic where the wife of poor Moody Timid-Skulking was awaiting his return from prison, and suddenly she understood. She remembered the little golden flower, “Acceptance-with-Joy,” which she had found blooming in the wilderness, and the blood-red flower, “Bearing-with-Love,” or “Forgiveness,” which grew in the prison house of the rocks on the great precipice, and she realized that they were growing here too in this stifling attic, and that here indeed there was a shortcut, steep and agonizing beyond anything which she herself had faced, but a real shortcut to the altar and the grave on the mountains on the very borders of the High Places. She also understood that her cousin Spiteful (but how could she call her by that name again?) was likely to arrive at the High Places even before her mother and sister.

She rose with a feeling of awe in her heart, and putting her arms around her cousin, said gently: