"Well, he was. She never was a raging beauty, but she had more men in love with her than any girl she ever knew, mother used to say, and more sense than all the rest put together. That's what I think was so funny. Men don't care for sense in a woman. If she can sign coal tickets and market tickets, and look after them, and be good-looking and nice it's all they care for. I never knew how to make out a check until my own daughter showed me. What's the use? Never had a dollar in bank in my life. Mr. Tate's the kind of man who thinks a woman ought to come to her husband for everything, and as he never gives me money unless I ask for it, and I don't ask until I need it to spend right away, it has no chance to get in a bank. I don't mean I have to worry Mr. Tate. He gives me all he can, and, besides, I always did think it was a mistake in a woman to know too much about business things. Men don't like it. I've always made it a rule never to do anything Mr. Tate could do for me. I've often noticed one or the other is going to be helpless, and I'd rather be waited on than wait." She settled herself more comfortably on the sofa and again opened her eyes cautiously. "Of course I'm old-fashioned. Young people have very different ideas from their parents. Girls plank themselves right straight alongside of men and say they are just as smart as men are. Of course they are. Women have always known it, but they used to have too much sense to tell it. Nowadays they tell everything. The easiest thing on earth to fool is a man. He just naturally loves helplessness, and when Aylette married I told her for mercy's sake not to be one of these new-fashioned kind of wives, but be a clinger. She doesn't like clingers, and sometimes I'm afraid she's too smart to be real happy. She takes after her grandfather Tate. I certainly do thank the Lord He didn't see fit to make me clever. I've often heard my mother say a smart woman had a hard time in life." "I wonder why Miss Gibbie did not marry." Mrs. Burnham was looking at Mrs. Moon. "If she had so many beaux it is strange she did not marry." "Now who on earth could think of Miss Gibbie Gault being married!" The cushion dropped from the top of Mrs. Tate's head and she stooped to pick it up. "Her independent tongue was laughed at and her witty speeches repeated, but what home could have stood her? She knew better than to get married. If she ever loved anybody, nobody ever knew it, mother used to say, but I always have believed she did. She certainly is one queer person. Mrs. Porter asked her last week to give something to the choir fund and she said she'd do nothing of the kind, and she thought the people ought to be paid for having to listen to squeaks like we had instead of paying them to squeak, and she wouldn't give a cent. She holds on to what she's got like paper to the wall, Mrs. Porter says." Mrs. Moon got up and pressed the button by the door, and when the maid appeared spoke to her.