d to hold. He was made not a little of by my
family, and though at one time I felt a touch of jealousy at the
preference I fancied he showed to Grace Goldie, he soon relieved my
fears by telling me that he hoped to become the husband of one of my
sisters.

My father, after a considerable amount of labour, proved his identity
with the son of Mr Clement Leslie, who perished with his wife at sea,
and established his claims to the property.

I had had quite enough of a "life on the ocean wave," and though I had
no great fancy for working all day at a desk, I agreed to enter my
father's office and tackle to in earnest, my incentive to labour, I
confess, being the hope of one day becoming the husband of Grace Goldie.
We married, and I have every reason still to call myself "Happy Jack."

STORY TWO, CHAPTER 1.

UNCLE BOZ, OR, HOW WE SPENT OUR CHRISTMAS DAY, LONG, LONG AGO.

Those were some of the pleasantest days of my boyhood which my brother
Jack and I spent--with Uncle Boz in his curious-looking abode on the
shore of the loud-roaring, tumultuous German Ocean, or North Sea, as it
is more frequently called. On the English shore, I should have said;
for Uncle Boz would not willingly have lived out of our snug little,
tight little island, had the wealth of the Indies been offered him to do
so.

"It's unique, ain't it?" Uncle Boz used to say, as he pointed with a
complacent air at his domicile. How Uncle Boz came to pick up that word
_unique_, I do not know; had he been aware of its Gallic derivation, he
would never have admitted it into his vocabulary--of that I am sure.
Singular it certainly was; I doubt if any other edifice could have been
found at all like it in the three kingdoms. It had been originally,
when Uncle Boz first became its owner, a two-roomed cottage,
strongly-built of roughly-hewn stone, and a coarse slate roof calculated
to defy the raging storms which swept over it. It stood on a level
space in a gap between cliffs, the gap opening on the sea, with a
descent of some twenty feet or so to the sands.

Uncle Boz having made his purchase, and settled himself and his
belongings in his new abode, forthwith began to build and improve; but
as he was his own architect and builder, the expense was not so great as
some folks find it, while the result was highly satisfactory to himself,
whatever the rest of the world might have thought about the matter.
First he added a wing; but as the room within it,