“Leave it to me, Compassionate! We won’t say a word to Murmuring, but I will speak to Bitterness and enlist his aid. Meanwhile I will get dear Mrs. Valiant and Mercy to help me prepare the cottage for you. Indeed, we won’t waste a moment! Did your mother leave the key with you … Yes! that’s good; let me have it and we will set to work at once. And you, meantime, as you are able, can begin gathering together your things and packing what you need to take with you. Oh, Cousin, I am so happy. I feel as though I can’t contain the joy but must burst with it! To think of it! A home for you and your husband and for my cousin Craven! I can help to make it ready and can go and meet them and bring them to it! Could anything be lovelier?”

The two women kissed each other with inexpressible joy and thanksgiving and then Grace and Glory sped on her way, first to the home of Mrs. Valiant, then to Mercy, then to the deserted cottage of the widow, Dismal Forebodings.

Such a transformation the three women and their friends worked in that cottage and in the garden overgrown with weeds, as can scarcely be imagined! Fearless Trust, one of the shepherds who was courting Mercy, and some of his friends, dug up the garden, burned the weeds, planted the beds with vegetables and flowers, and painted the cottage. The women scoured and cleaned the rooms, sewed curtains, washed linen, repaired and arranged the furnishings, and joyfully contributed from their own stores the articles needed to restock the linen and china cupboards and to beautify the rooms.

Within a week it was the neatest, fairest, coziest cottage in the village, and the cupboards were stocked with supplies—loaves and pies and jellies and fruits and vegetables and a host of other good things. Mrs. Valiant had brought over some fowls, and her future son-in-law had built a fine run and chicken coop. Then Compassionate was taken to the cottage and installed there with great rejoicings, and everything was ready for the reception of her husband and brother the following day.

Her closest friends gathered round her that evening. She looked a different woman already in her great joy at escaping from the miserable attic and having a home of her own. As she sat in the porch with her cousin, Grace and Glory, and her friends, Mrs. Valiant, Mercy, and Fearless Trust, they talked over their plans and hopes, yes, and still more, their fears, for the morrow. For fears there were.