Once Flora Clark told Mrs. Jameson to her face, in the sewing circle, when she had been talking for a good hour about the coffin-plates, declaring them to be grewsome and shocking, that, for her part, she did not care for them, did not have one in her house—­though every one of her relations were dead, and she might have her walls covered with them—­but she believed in respecting those who did; and it seemed to her that, however much anybody felt called upon to interfere with the ways of the living, the relics of the dead should be left alone.  Flora concluded by saying that it seemed to her that if the Linnville folks let Mrs. Jameson’s bean-pots alone, she might keep her hands off their coffin-plates.

Mrs. Jameson was quite unmoved even by that.  She said that Miss Clark did not realize, as she would do were her sphere wider, the incalculable harm that such a false standard of art might do in a community:  that it might even pervert the morals.

“I guess if we don’t have anything to hurt our morals any worse than our coffin-plates, we shall do,” returned Flora.  She said afterward that she felt just like digging up some of her own coffin-plates, and having them framed and hung up, and asking Mrs. Jameson to tea.

All through June and a part of July Louisa and I had seen the clandestine courtship between Harry Liscom and Harriet Jameson going on.  We could scarcely help it.  We kept wondering why neither Caroline Liscom nor Mrs. Jameson seemed aware of it.  Of course, Mrs. Jameson was so occupied with the village welfare that it might account for it in her case, but we were surprised that Caroline was so blinded.  We both of us thought that she would be very much averse to the match, from her well-known opinion of the Jamesons; and it proved that she was.  Everybody talked so much about Harry and his courtship of Harriet that it seemed incredible that Caroline should not hear of it, even if she did not see anything herself to awaken suspicion.  We did not take into consideration the fact that a strong-minded woman like Caroline Liscom has difficulty in believing anything which she does not wish to be true, and that her will stands in her own way.

However, on Wednesday of the second week of July both she and Mrs. Jameson had their eyes opened perforce.  It was a beautiful moonlight evening, and Louisa and I were sitting at the windows looking out and chatting peacefully.  Little Alice had gone to bed, and we had not lit the lamp, it was so pleasant in the moonlight.  Presently, about half-past eight o’clock, two figures strolled by, and we knew who they were.

“It is strange to me that Grandma Cobb does not find it out, if Mrs. Jameson is too wrapped up in her own affairs and with grafting ours into them,” said Louisa thoughtfully.

I remarked that I should not be surprised if she did know; and it turned out afterward that it was so.  Grandma Cobb had known all the time, and Harriet had gone through her room to get to the back stairs, down which she stole to meet Harry.