"Well, if you ask me, Gabriella, I never was so dead set against Mr. Charley as the rest of you. I helped raise Jane from the time she was no higher than that--and I ain't sayin' nothin' against her except that Mr. Charley ain't half as bad to my mind as she makes him out. Some men respond to naggin' and some don't--that's what I said to her one day when she broke down and cried on my shoulder--and you've got to be mighty particular when you begin to nag that you're naggin' the right sort. But she won't listen, not she. 'If I don't tell Charley of his faults, who's goin' to?' she asks. You know Jane always did talk pretty free to me ever since she was a little girl. Well, there are some people that simply can't stand bein' told of their faults, and Mr. Charley is one of 'em. It ain't the kind of treatment that agrees with him, and if I'd been in Jane's place, I reckon I'd have found it out long ago. But it ain't her way to learn anything--you know that as well as I do. She's obliged to make the world over even if it drops to pieces in her hands." "She doesn't seem to have done much with Charley." "Well, you mark my words, Mr. Charley ain't bad, but he's full of natur', and Jane, is the kind of woman that's never happy unless she's gettin' the better of natur'. Whatever's natural is plum wrong, that's the way she looks at it; but mind you, I ain't sayin' she's all in the right. Naggin' ain't a virtue to my mind any mo' than drink is, but Jane, she can't see it that way, and there ain't a bit of use tryin' to make her. She's soft, but she's mulish, and the hardest thing on earth to push is a mule that looks soft." "It's such a pity, but I suppose nothing will change her. Tell me about mother." "Yo' ma looks downright po'ly. What with her sickness and her bother about Jane and the bad weather, she ain't managin' to keep as spry as I'd like to see her. From the stitch in her back she has most of the time it wouldn't surprise me any day to hear that she'd come down with kidney trouble, and she breathes so short that consumption has crossed my mind mo' than once when I was talkin' to her."