"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.