r you know I only said I should
be so _glad_ to be alone with Joseph, and to try to be good to him;
for he is a very kind boy, and if he is a little awkward with the
dolls, I mean to make the best of it. _One can't have everything_," I
added, laughing.

Lady Elizabeth drew my head towards her, and stroked and kissed it.

"GOD bless you, child," she said. "You _have_ inherited your
father's smile."

* * * * *

"But, I say, Selina," whispered Joseph, when I went to look at his
fortress in the bay-window. "Do you suppose it's because he's dead
that she cried behind her spectacles when she said you had got his
smile?"

A HAPPY FAMILY.

CHAPTER I.

"If solid happiness we prize,
Within our breast this jewel lies.

* * * * *

From our own selves our joys must flow,
And peace begins at home."

COTTON.

The family--our family, not the Happy Family--consisted of me and my
brothers and sisters. I have a father and mother, of course.

I am the eldest, as I remind my brothers; and of the more worthy
gender, which my sisters sometimes forget. Though we live in the
village, my father is a gentleman, as I shall be when I am grown up. I
have told the village boys so more than once. One feels mean in
boasting that one is better born than they are; but if I did not tell
them, I am not sure that they would always know.

Our house is old, and we have a ghost--the ghost of my
great-great-great-great-great-aunt.

She "crossed her father's will," nurse says, and he threatened to flog
her with his dog-whip, and she ran away, and was never heard of more.
He would not let the pond be dragged, but he never went near it again;
and the villagers do not like to go near it now. They say you may meet
her there, after sunset, flying along the path among the trees, with
her hair half down, and a knot of ribbon fluttering from it, and
parted lips, and terror in her eyes.

The men of our family (my father's family, my mother is Irish) have
always had strong wills. I have a strong will myself.

People say I am like the picture of my great-grandfather (the
great-great-great-nephew of the ghost). He must have been a wonderful
old gentleman by all accounts. Sometimes nurse says to us, "Have your
own way, and you'll live the longer," and it always makes me think of
great-grandfather, who had so much of his own way, and lived to be
nearly a hundred