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. For the music
she had referred to was Dvorak.