"Won't you do me a great favor? Hire a man and wagon to-morrow--or to-day, if there's time--and go to some of our woodland near town, and get some of the material, and put up such a shade on the south and west sides of our house; that is, if you don't object." "Object? 'Twould be great fun; make me feel like a boy again, I reckon. But I ought to remind you that the thing won't look a bit pretty, two or three days later, when the leaves begin to fade. Dead leaves an' a white house don't 'compose,' as I heard you say one day to a woman about two calicoes that was contrary to each other. Besides, 'tain't necessary, for double-width sheetin', or two widths of it side by side, an' right out of the store here, would make a better awnin', to say nothin' o' the looks, an' you can afford it easy enough." "Perhaps, but there are other people who can't, and I want to show off a tree-bough awning to some who need contrivances like it." "I--see," said Caleb, departing abruptly, while Doctor Taggess exclaimed:-- "And here I've been practising in some of those bake-ovens of houses for thirty years, and never thought of that very simple means of relief! Good day, Mrs. Somerton; I'll go home and tell my wife what I've heard, then I think I'll read some of the penitential Psalms and some choice bits of Proverbs on the mental peculiarities of fools." The arbor was completed by dark, and on the next day, and for a fortnight afterward, almost every woman who entered the store was invited to step into the garden and see how well, and yet cheaply, the house was shaded from the sun. All were delighted, though some warned the owner that the shade would kill her vines, whereupon Doctor Taggess, who spent parts of several hours in studying the structure, suggested that if the probable copyists were to set their posts and frameworks securely, they might serve as support for quick-growing hardy vines that might be "set" in the spring of the following year, and clamber all over the skeleton roof before the hottest days came. Thereupon Grace volunteered to write a lot of nursery men to learn what vines, annual or perennial, grew most rapidly and cost least, and to leave the replies in the store for general inspection. "Doctor," Grace asked during one of the physician's visits of inspection, "where did the settlers of this country come from, that they never think of certain of their own necessities? Don't scold me, please; I'm not going to abuse your darling West; besides, 'tis my West as well as yours, for every interest I have is here. But Eastern farmers and villagers plant shade trees and vines near their houses, unless they can afford to build piazzas,--and perhaps in addition to piazzas. They shade their village streets, too, and many of their highways. Aren't such things the custom in other parts of the United States?"