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Things stood out in it, sharp and suddenly strange, like the trees and houses in the light outside: the wine-red satin stripes in the grey damask curtains at the three windows; the rings of wine-red roses on the grey carpet; the tarnished pattern on the grey wall-paper; the furniture shining like dark wine; the fluted emerald green silk in the panel of the piano and the hanging bag of the work-table; the small wine-red flowers on the pale green chintz; the green Chinese bowls in the rosewood cabinet; the blue and red parrot on the chair.
"I used to make tea just at that time and sit there for a whole hour." "And didn't you sit close to the partition on your side? Sometimes I was sure of it. I could even fancy that I could hear your dress brushing against the wall-paper close beside me. Didn't you sit close to the partition?" "I I don't know where I sat." Old Grannis shyly put out his hand and took hers as it lay upon her lap.
Wachtmann's chauffeur must have answered that everything was all right. "You knew that they had discovered the poisoned wall-paper?" asked Janeff. A long parley followed. Finally, Janeff repeated what apparently had been his instructions. "Now, let me see," he said. "You want me to stay here until the last minute so that I can overhear whether any alarm is given for her? All right.
Makely's warning eye upon me, I could not say so, and I made what sounded to me like a Gothic murmur of acquiescence. It sufficed for Mrs. Makely's purpose, at any rate, and she went on, without giving the Altrurian a chance to say what he thought the educational effect of wall-paper would be: "Well, the long and short of it is that we want you to make this money for us, Mr. Homos."
They climbed long flights of stairs, and interviewed landladies, and looked at rooms with the customary faded carpets and shabby wall-paper and musty smell, in narrow streets withal, that seemed to Faith like prisons. In vain they tried to make their tastes and their purse agree. They had to come to it, a third-story room, faded carpet, shabby paper, and hard bed.
A dozen high-backed chairs, arranged stiffly in rows like grenadiers, a cumbrous dining-table and a couple of old-fashioned sideboards constituted the entire furniture of the room; and one could see at a glance that they had already done service for several generations. Such luxuries as wall-paper, paintings or carpet could not be found here.
A little bedstead, of painted wood and old-fashioned shape, was hung with yellow cotton printed with red stars, one armchair and two small chairs, also of painted wood, and covered with the same cotton print of which the window-curtains were also made; a gray wall-paper sprigged with flowers blackened and greasy with age; a fireplace full of kitchen utensils of the vilest kind, two bundles of fire-logs; a stone shelf, on which lay some jewelry false and real, a pair of scissors, a dirty pincushion, and some white scented gloves; an exquisite hat perched on the water-jug, a Ternaux shawl stopping a hole in the window, a handsome gown hanging from a nail; a little hard sofa, with no cushions; broken clogs and dainty slippers, boots that a queen might have coveted; cheap china plates, cracked or chipped, with fragments of a past meal, and nickel forks the plate of the Paris poor; a basket full of potatoes and dirty linen, with a smart gauze cap on the top; a rickety wardrobe, with a glass door, open and empty, and on the shelves sundry pawn-tickets, this was the medley of things, dismal or pleasing, abject and handsome, that fell on his eye.
And the world of Byron seems a sad and faded world, a weird and inhuman world, where men were romantic in whiskers, ladies lived, apparently, in bowers, and the very word has the sound of a piece of stage scenery. Roses and nightingales recur in their poetry with the monotonous elegance of a wall-paper pattern.
Tante's beautiful notes, rising to her like the bubbles of a spring through clear water, seemed to encircle her, ringing her in from the wider consciousness. While she listened she looked out at the branches of young leaves, softly stirring against the morning sky. There was her wall-paper, with the little pink flower creeping up it. She was in her own little bed. Tante was practising.
Aristide remained stock still, apparently contemplating one of the flowers of the orange-coloured wall-paper. And his mother felt sudden impatience as she saw him hesitating thus. "Ah! well," she said, "I've come back again to my former opinion; you're not very shrewd. And you think you ought to have had Eugene's letters to read?
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