"I wish, Cousin Judith, you would tell us something about the picture," said Betty. The ladies all call Mrs. Carey, Cousin Judith. "Tell me who is that beautiful dame with the pearls in her black hair?" "That is your great aunt, Lady Rosamond, who set up the almshouses," said Mrs. Carey. "And who is that old lady in the close coif and black veil?" I asked. "She looks like a nun." "And so she was a nun. That is Mrs. Margaret Vernon, my dears. She was a Lady Abbess of Hartland, and brought up your grandmother, my old Lady. So after King Henry put down the convents, she came and ended her days with great content at Stanton Court. Mistress Corbet says she can just remember her, a very aged lady." "And who is that beautiful fair woman in black?" I asked. "I never saw a lovelier face, if she were not so pale. But she looks very sad." "That is called the fair Dame of Stanton!" said Mrs. Judith; and then followed a long tale, too long to write here. "Anne says my Cousin Corbet is the fair dame come back again!" said Betty. "And that it was she who made me crooked by her arts, but Mary says it is not true." "Of course it is not true!" returned Mrs. Judith, indignantly. "I wonder at you, Lady Betty, for listening to such stuff about your dear cousin, who has always been so kind to you; and I will give Anne a good rating, that I will! There has been mischief enough done by such talk, before now. Everybody knows how your misfortune happened, my dear, and that was by being shrew-struck—beshrew the careless wench by whom it came about." "How was that?" I asked. "And what do you mean by being shrew-struck?" "Bless you, my dear, don't you know? It was Judith Hawtree did the mischief, not that she meant it, 'but evil is wrought by want of thought,' my dears. Old Mary left my Lady Betty in her charge, awhile; and what does Judith do, but lay the child down under the tree on the grass to sleep, while she gossipped with her sweetheart. There were always shrew-mice in the park, and one of them no doubt ran over my poor dear lady as she lay asleep on the ground, for there were the marks of its feet on her dress, and from that time the troubles begun." "Perhaps it was not the shrew-mouse, after all," I ventured to say. "Perhaps Lady Betty took cold from lying on the damp ground. It seems more reasonable, than that a mouse should cripple a child by just running over its dress once." "Ah, well! That may be your notion, Mrs. Merton. For my part, I don't pretend to be so much wiser than my father and mother before me," said the old lady, rather offended. "I don't profess to understand how a sting-nettle, that looks much like any other plant, should poison one's hand for hours, but I know it does. Anyhow the poor child pined from that day, but it is absurd and wicked too, to bring up that old story, which once nearly cost the dear lady her life."