set them out
around our village houses. The calm insolence of benevolence with
which Mrs. Jameson did this was inimitable. People actually did not
know whether to be furious or amused at this liberty taken with their
property. They saw with wonder Mrs. Jameson, with old Jonas following
laden with vines and shovel, also the girls and Cobb, who had been
pressed, however unwillingly, into service, tagging behind trailing
with woodbine and clematis; they stood by and saw their house-banks
dug up and the vines set, and in most cases said never a word. If
they did expostulate, Mrs. Jameson only directed Jonas where to put
the next vine, and assured the bewildered owner of the premises that
he would in time thank her.

However, old Jonas often took the irate individual aside for a
consolatory word. "Lord a-massy, don't ye worry," old Jonas would
say, with a sly grin; "ye know well enough that there won't a blamed
one of the things take root without no sun an' manure; might as well
humor her long as she's sot on 't."

Then old Jonas would wink slowly with a wink of ineffable humor.
There was no mistaking the fact that old Jonas was getting a deal of
solid enjoyment out of the situation. He had had a steady, hard grind
of existence, and was for the first time seeing the point of some of
those jokes of life for which his natural temperament had given him
a relish. He acquired in those days a quizzical cock to his right
eyebrow, and a comically confidential quirk to his mouth, which were
in themselves enough to provoke a laugh.

Mrs. Jameson, however, did not confine herself, in her efforts for
the wholesale decoration of our village, to the planting of vines
around our house-walls; and there were, in one or two cases, serious
consequences.

When, thinking that corn-cockles and ox-eyed daisies would be a
charming combination at the sides of the country road, she caused
them to be sowed, and thereby introduced them into Jonas Green's
wheat-field, he expostulated in forcible terms, and threatened a suit
for damages; and when she caused a small grove of promising young
hemlocks to be removed from Eben Betts' woodland and set out in the
sandy lot in which the schoolhouse stands, without leave or license,
it was generally conceded that she had exceeded her privileges as a
public benefactress.

I said at once there would be trouble, when Louisa came home and told
me about it.

"The school house looks as if it were set in a shad