"If you will stop talking and ring for Hedwig to take my things I'll think more of your manners. You're getting as bad as Buzzie Tate. Some of these days your breath will be lost. What's that I smell is here? Winter pinks? Bless my soul if they're not the same kind I used to pull as a child when I spent the day with Grandmother Bloodgood!" She walked over to the desk and sniffed the flowers upon it. "The very same. Down by the sun-dial they used to be--" "That's where they are now. I love them. They are so plain and unpretentious. Not a bit like chrysanthemums." She helped Miss Gibbie off with her coat, untied the strings to her bonnet, and took her gloves; then she examined the coat critically. "You need a new one, Miss Gibbie. This one is downright shabby. When you order your dresses in January you certainly must get a new coat." "I'll do nothing of the kind. I've only had that coat nine years and it's got to last ten. I have two others, one heavier and one lighter weight, and I seldom wear this. Have no idea of getting another." "But velvet rubs so, and you don't want people to talk as if--" "Don't I?" Miss Gibbie sat down in the big chair Mary Cary had pushed for her near the fire, and spread out the full folds of her black silk skirt with deliberate precision. "How do you know what I want people to do? My dear Miss Cary, only dead people don't talk. What we say and what we do, what we wear and where we go, is cause for comment in exact proportion to what we do not say and what we do not do, what we do not wear and where we do not go, with those people who do us the honor of spending their time in discussing us. Just eighteen years ago this November my brain grasped the importance of fully realizing this and the advantage of pleasing one person in this world. To please all is impossible. I would deny no one the pleasure of talking about me." "It depends on what they say. I don't like people to say things about me that aren't nice." She handed Hedwig Miss Gibbie's wraps. "I mean if they aren't true." "When I here things said about me that are not nice and are not true I take a lawyer and go to see the person who has said them and call for proofs. When not forthcoming I take away with me a piece of paper testifying that said person has lied. I have two or three little affidavits of that kind in my desk. Things said about me that are not nice and yet are true I let alone, but the other kind--" She waved her hand. "Were there fewer cowards in the world there would be fewer gossips. But what's the matter with my coat? It isn't worn out, and if I got a new one it would be of the same material and the same shape. Not going to get a new one!" "Are you always going to wear the same shape clothes?" Mary Cary put a log of wood on the fire, then sat down on the rug at Miss Gibbie's feet and smiled in her face. "Aren't you ever going to change?"