"_Miss_ Nellie, indeed! Times are changed,"--murmured Natty, with a look of surprise. "Her not speaking proves her the wisest of us all," resumed the widow, looking at Old Nell, who with tremulous head nodded violent approval. You must know, old Nell had become as deaf as a post, and, being incapable of understanding anything, she gratified her natural amiability by approving of everything--at least everything that was uttered by speakers with a visible smile. When they spoke with gravity, old Nell shook her tremulous head, and put on a look of alarmingly solemn sympathy. On the present occasion, however, the antique old thing seemed to have been affected with some absolutely new, and evidently quaint, ideas, for she laughed frequently and immoderately, especially when she gazed hard at Jack Matterby after having looked long at Nellie Grove! "Now, Jack," resumed the widow for the fiftieth time, "you must know that after I lost you, and had given you up for dead, I came back 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.