Arizona weekly enterprise., 1882-10-21
IN THE OLD HOME.

Yes, I was really engaged to be mar ried, and marriage was quite an event in our family, since Ellen and Sophy and Prudence were settled into old maids, and mamma was a widow of twenty years Standing. Nell had been engaged once, but her lover, poor soul, was wrecked in the Arctic, and Sophy was plain. and had never received a proposal at all, but Prudence had al ways been too busy in caring for the household and nursing mamma to think of such thing. So that we had lived like sisterhoOd of nuns in the old Hall since l could remember.
 It was a mouldy, musty sort of an old place, although in bygone years it must have been stupendously grand. There was a conservatory where no flowers ever grew; a dining-hall with arched and panelled ceilings, which, instead of being sacred to the rites of hospitality, was crowded with old packing-boxes and broken furniture; great musty- smelling picture gallery, where a soli- tary portrait of a high-shouldered Ven vile ancestor hung by a broken red cord, sad relic of all the departed art treasures.
 There were deserted lawns, where big eyed cows and flocks of sheep grazed up to the very door. there were dilapidated fountains, whose water-ducts were choked up with drySleaves and dust; paths grown over with weeds, box-mon- sters distorted out of all shape, roses grown to tangled wildernesses. And we, the Widow Fenville and her four daughters, lived in one wing, keeping as comfortable as we could, and trying to be ladies on an income which would have pinched chair woman.
 Until Helen Devereaux,w who had mar ried a young lawyer, invited me to come and visit her-me, lilly Venville, a cherry-chceked girl of eighteen, with round blue eyes and deal of inexperi- ence-and l became acquainted with Mr. Lillume.
 He was a lawyer too. He used tc come home with Mir. DevereauX to tea sometimes, and he took us to drive 1T the Park, and I liked him, and before knew it the liking changed 10 love.
 My little beauty" he said to me ono day, you deserve a prince. Do you think you could be happy with a poo young lawyer?'
 'I am used to poverty" Isaid bright. ly. "We have been poor all our lives mamma, and the girls, and me. And, suddenly hiding my face in the window curtains, ''I think I could be happl anywhere with you; but"
 "Well, little lilly" he said carelessly "what is the but?"
 Mamma, and Prue, and Sophie, ant Nell could not leave them" And you need not, lilly" he said "They shall all come and live with us My home may not be splendid place | but it will shelter all who are dear t l you"
 So came home with the good news and we were all happy together, unt 1 Prudence remembered.
 1.-The heir-at-law." she exclaime suddenly, with lengthening face. w haven't told lilly about the heir-at law"
 ''What of him?" said I. ''He is off i Switzerland. He needn't trouble us.
 ''But he has come back" said man ma. ''He is going to be married. An | there are alot of upholsterers, and deco rators, and carpenters coming up fror the city, and Miss Octavia Fuller, th squire's daughter, drove up yesterda to look at the place-and do you know lilly, we shrewdly suspected she is be the lady of Heart Hallr'
 Well, she's welcome to it," said ''Let Mir. Hart have the old place. Joh and l are going to make home for yo and the girls. It may not be an ol palace of a place like this, but l al quite sure it will be a happy hom mamma. dear"
 But still, after had laid my head c the pillow at night, the tears kept con ing into my eyes at the idea of the O home passing into the hands of stranger For although the blood of the Hear might run in his veins, this distant rel tive of my mother had spent all his Ii in foreign countries, but could have l sweet associations connected with u old Hall.
 He could not know, as we did, whe, the trout darted swiftest in the pool, n where the earliest violets opened the blue eyes. He could not gather u blood-red jacqueminot roses out of u tangled briars, nor tell on which of t ruined espaliers the juicy peppers ripe ed the sweetest. He did not know
 which of the angles of the picture 2; lery the echo fingered like diser bodied ghost, nor from what windC the finest view spread itself out, a liyii