"How any one dare live with such patterns is beyond me." The paperhanger's wife verbed better than she knew.

Few are those indeed who dare live with beauty.
When the paper was hung in Theophil's room, so great was the sensation in the household that even old Mr.Talbot ventured to look in at it, keeping very close to his wife.

It was so the old man had stood open-mouthed before the first steam-engine, and here again was the Devil plainly at work.
"Lord a-mercy, Jane," he said to his wife, "what is the world coming to ?" The world was indeed changing beneath the old man's feet, and the heavens opening as never before in his time--with, he might be right, some assistance from beneath; and--it was undoubtedly safer in the kitchen.
Mrs.Talbot in these matters lived and loved by faith in her boy, as she called him.

But even she had her doubts, which she expressed in a way that showed, funny old woman as she was, that she was not without a sort of blind insight.
"I suppose it's all right, boy," she said, "and it sounds silly to say about a lot of harmless lines and flowers, but it seems to your old mother that there's something wrong about that paper,--something almost wicked in it.

It reminds me of that nasty music you and Jenny are so fond of playing." Here Theophil enveloped her in a huge hug, and laughingly mocked her with playful caresses, smiling to himself all the same.