“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.
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 shady grove,” said she, “and is ever so pretty. The worst of it is, of course, the trees won't grow in that sand-hill.”
“The worst of it is, if she has taken those trees without leave or license, as I suspect, Eben Betts will not take it as a joke,” said I; and I was right.
Mr. H. Boardman Jameson had to pay a goodly sum to Eben Betts to hush the matter up; and the trees soon withered, and were cut up for firewood for the schoolhouse. People blamed old Jonas Martin somewhat for his share of this transaction, arguing that he ought not to have yielded to Mrs. Jameson in such a dishonest transaction, even in the name of philanthropy; but he defended himself, saying: “It's easy 'nough to talk, but I'd like to see any of ye stand up agin that woman. When she gits headed, it's either git out from under foot or git knocked over.”