Madame Prewster, the renowned, sat majestically in a Windsor rocking-chair, extra size, with a large pillow comfortably tucked in behind her illustrious and rheumatic back. Her prophetic feet rested on a wooden stool; her oracular neck was bound with a bright-colored shawl; her necromantic locomotive apparatus was incased in a great number of predictive petticoats, and her whole aspect was portentous. She is a woman who may be of any age from 45 to 120, for her face is so oily that wrinkles won’t stay in it; they slip out and leave no trace. She is an unctuous woman, with plenty of material in her—enough, in fact, for two or three. She is adipose to a degree that makes her circumference problematical, and her weight a mere matter of conjecture. Moreover, one instantly feels that she is thoroughly water-proof, and is certain that if she could be induced to shed tears, she would weep lard oil. Grim, grizzled, and stony-eyed, is this juicy old Sibyl; and she glared fearfully on the hero with her fishy optics, until he wished he hadn’t done anything. She was evidently just out of bed, although it was long past noon, and when she yawned, which she did seven times a minute on a low average, the effect was gloomy and cavernous, and the timid delegate in search of the mysterious trembled in his boots. At last, he with uncovered head and timid demeanor presented his card entitling him to twelve shillings’ worth of witchcraft, and made an humble request to have it honored. He had previously, while pretending to warm himself at the stove, been occupied in making horrible grimaces at the baby, and then sketching it in his hat as it disfigured its own face by frantic screams; and he also took a quiet revenge on the pugnacious servant by making a picture of her in a fighting attitude, with one eye bunged and her jaw knocked round to her left ear. When the ponderous Witch had got all ready for business, and had taken a very long greasy stare at her customer, as if she was making up her mind what sort of a customer on the whole he might be, she determined to begin her mighty magic. So she took up the cards, which were almost as greasy as she herself, and prepared for business, previously giving one most tremendous yawn, which opened her sacred jaws so wide that only a very narrow isthmus of hair behind her ears connected the top of her respected head with the back of her venerated neck. She then presented the cards for her customer to cut, and when he had accomplished that feat, which he did in some perturbation, she ran them carelessly over between her fingers, and began to speak very slowly, and without much thought of what she was about, as if it was a lesson she had learned by heart. Each word slipped smoothly out from her fat lips as if it had been anointed with some patent lubricator, and her speech was as follows:—