“Just the right people,” she thought, as she sat down among them. “Lady Crosbie is too busy, and has too wide an acquaintance, and Mrs. Jordan is too airified, and Miss Fisher might have other things to do. These are the ones who are just right, and look as if they could tell stories if they chose.” But a good deal of time is lost in real life in unnecessary conversation; so we’ll learn by that, and not lose any more here. I’ll just go straight on to Mrs. Inchbald’s story, as she told it that afternoon. _The Story of Mother Midnight, or the Witch of Wendlestone._ “The scene of my narrative,” commenced Mrs. Inchbald, “lies before you, my dears. Which of you can find me a small forest cottage, a river, a white cow, a church, and an oak-tree?” “I can.” “I can.” “I know.” “There it is.” “The picture by Nasmyth,” cried ten voices all at once. “Well, that small cottage once sheltered the unhappy head of the unfortunate subject of my tale. Unfortunate, yet not so at the last. Let us be happy in thinking, that after years of persecution and winters of privation, when the coldness of her fellow-creatures’ hearts was only equalled by the rigour of the pitiless winter snow that threatened to cover her humble lodge, let us be happy to remember, I repeat, that this woman lived to know the protection of a friend.” Mrs. Inchbald paused. She was fond of telling stories. It was good practice for her art. She never gave up a life-long struggle with a stammer, that tripped her up constantly in short sentences, or conversational phrase. This stammer, however, was utterly routed by her fine-sounding and ornate sentences of narration, which she declaimed in a magnificent voice:-- There was an age of superstition which blackens history’s page. During the period immediately following the Reformation, fear of witchcraft in England was so great, that many innocent lives were sacrificed needlessly to assuage the malignant ignorance of the time. It is true that other countries were even more to blame than England, a greater number of innocent people being put to death in Germany, Italy, and France. Yet for all that, our crimes are sufficient to make us shudder in reading of them, and thankful that such things can never recur.