Louisa ventured to say that she thought vines very pretty, but she knew some people objected to them on the score of spiders, and also thought that they were bad for the paint. We poor, frugal village folk have always to consider whether beauty will trespass on utility, and consequently dollars and cents. There are many innocent slaves to Mammon in our midst. Mrs. Jameson sniffed in her intensely scornful way. "Spiders and paint!" said she. "I am going to have the houses of this village vine-clad. It is time that the people were educated in beauty." "People won't like it if she does go to planting vines around their houses without their permission, even if she does mean well," said Louisa after she had gone. "She never will dare to without their permission," said I; but I wondered while I spoke, and Louisa laughed. "Don't you be too sure of that," said she--and she was right. Permission in a few cases Mrs. Jameson asked, and in the rest she assumed. Old Jonas Martin ransacked the woods for vines--clematis and woodbine--then he, with Mrs. Jameson to superintend, 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.