“That’s what comes from letting that shoot run catawumpas three years ago.  I told you about it at the time, Tucker,” said Miss Lavinia with a stern glance at Uncle Tucker, who stood with spade and twine at the corner of the porch.

Miss Lavinia sat in a large, calico-cushioned rocking-chair at the end of the porch, and had been issuing orders to Rose Mary and little Miss Amanda about the readjustment of the fragrant vine that trailed across the end of the porch over her window and on out to a trellis in the side yard.  Her high mob cap sat on her head in an angle of aggression always, and her keen black eyes enforced all commands issuing from her stern old mouth.

“Now, Amandy, train that shoot straight while you’re about it,” she continued.  “It comes plumb from the roots, and I don’t want to have to look at a wild-growing vine right here under my window for all my eighty-second and maybe last year.”

“I’ve gone and misplaced my glasses and I can’t hardly see,” answered Miss Amanda in her sweet little quaver that sounded like a silver bell with a crack in it.  “Lend me your’n, Tucker!”

“You are a-going to misplace your eyes some day, Sister Amandy.  Then you’ll be a-wanting mine, and I’ll have to cut ’em out and give ’em to you, I suppose,” said Uncle Tucker as he handed over his huge, steel-rimmed glasses.

“The Bible says ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,’ Tucker, but not in a borrowing sense of the word, as I remember,” remarked Miss Lavinia in a meditative tone of voice.  “And that would be the thing about my getting the new teeth.  Don’t either of you need ’em, and it would be selfish of me to spend on something they couldn’t anybody borrow from me.  Amandy, dig a little deeper around that shoot, I don’t want no puny vine under my window!”

“I’m a-trying, Sister Viney,” answered Miss Amanda propitiatingly.  “I’ve been a-bending over so long my knees are in a kinder tremble.”

“Let me finish digging and put in the new dirt for you, Aunt Amandy,” begged Rose Mary, who had given the armful of vine to Everett to hold while Uncle Tucker tied the strings in the exact angle indicated by Miss Lavinia.  “I can do it in no time.”

“No, child, I reckon I’d better do it myself,” answered Miss Amanda as she sat back on the grass for a moment’s rest.  “I have dug around and trained this vine the last week in April for almost sixty years now.  Mr. Lovell brought it by to Ma one spring as he hauled his summer groceries over the Ridge to Warren County.  By such care it’s never died down yet, and I have made it my custom to give sprouts away to all that would take ’em.  I’m not a-doubting that there is some of this vine a-budding out all over Harpeth Valley from Providence Nob to the River bend.”