here,
feeling an intense longing to see once more the old home, and I began a
school. In course of years God sent me prosperity, notwithstanding the
murmurings of rebellion which rose in my heart when I thought of _you_.
The school became so big that I had to take a new house--that in which
you now sit--and sought about for a teacher to help me. Long before
that time poor Ned Grove had been drowned at sea. Your old friend Natty
there had become the first mate to a merchantman, and helped to support
his grandmother. Nellie, whose education I had begun, as you know, when
you were a boy, had grown into a remarkably clever and pretty girl, as,
no doubt, you will admit. She had become a daily governess in the
family of a gentleman who had come to live in the neighbourhood. Thus
she was enabled to assist her brother in keeping up the old home, and
took care of granny."

At this point our hero, as he looked at the fair face and modest
carriage of his old playmate heartily admitted, (to himself), that she
was much more than "pretty," and felt that he now understood how a
fisherman's daughter had, to his intense surprise, grown up with so much
of gentle manners, and such soft lady-like hands. But he said never a
word!

"Most happily for me," continued Mrs Matterby, "Nellie lost her
situation at the time I speak of, owing to the death of her employer.
Thus I had the chance of securing her at once. And now, here we have
been together for some years, and I hope we may never part as long as we
live. We had considerable difficulty in getting old Nell to quit the
cottage and come here. Indeed, we should never have succeeded, I think,
had it not been for Natty--"

"That's true," interrupted Nat, with a laugh.

"The dear old woman was too deaf to understand, and too obstinate to
move: so one day I put the bed clothes over her head, gathered her and
them up in my arms, and brought her up here bodily, very much as I
carried _you_ ashore, Jack, in the life-buoy, without asking leave. And
she has been content and happy ever since."

What more of this tale there is to tell shall be told, reader, by
excerpts from our hero's Christmas letter to thin little Mrs Seaford,
as follows:--

"Pardon my seeming neglect, dear old friend. I meant to have run up
to town to see you the instant I set foot in England, but you must
admit that my dear, long-lost mother had prior claims. Pardon, also,
my impudence in now asking you