"'Lungs and Livers.' and it was fine. It really was. How to breathe properly and how to make your liver behave itself are things few understand, according to Doctor Mallby. I love to hear him. He gets so mad with ignorance and stupidity. You would have enjoyed him." "I never go to organ recitals." Miss Gibbie waved her fan as if to brush away unpleasant suggestions. "Have you seen anything of the Pryors lately? Some one told me Lizzie Bettie was trying to make her mother and Maria go away. The whole business ought to be separated from each other. Nothing so gets on your nerves as seeing from each other. Nothing so gets on your nerves as seeing the same sort of faces day after day. And of course they wouldn't think it proper to smile under three months at least. "They certainly seem to be grieved by their father's death. I had no idea how many people loved Mr. Pryor, or how--" "Little his family guessed it. They took William for granted, like they take everything else in life. And now it's too late to let him know how they loved him. My dear"--Miss Gibbie leaned forward suddenly--"you love your husband? Then tell him so. If he is a good husband tell him that also. There's nothing a man can stand so much of as praise. A woman can make a good husband out of almost any kind of man if she will just go about it right." "But suppose she doesn't know how? It takes a long time for women to understand men." "Do they ever?" Miss Gibbie's penetrating eyes were losing no shade of the color rising slowly in Mrs. Burnham's face. "But isn't it because they spend so much time wondering why men don't understand them? The best of men, you believe, are selfish? They are. I am not one of the people who thinks the Lord did such a mighty work when He made man, but if a woman can make up her mind to marry him, it is generally her fault if she doesn't keep his love to the end--" "Oh, I don't think so!" Mrs. Burnham's voice was vehement in protest. "Of course you don't. You are a married woman. I am not. I did not say always. I said generally, and I mean what I say. My dear"--again Miss Gibbie leaned forward--"I have been young and now am old, and I have watched many lives. With only occasional exceptions a woman has just about the kind of husband she makes the man she marries become." "I don't think that, either. A man's character is supposedly formed before he marries; and, besides, a woman ought not to be required to make the kind of husband she wants. She certainly can't make him intelligent, or brilliant, or able, just because she wants him to be." "I never said anything about making a husband intelligent or brilliant or able. Many miserable wives have husbands of that kind. Any woman of sense wants a man of sense--but most of all she wants to be his first thought in life. And when she isn't it's usually because of selfishness or sensitiveness or stupidity on her part." "But look at the men who are--who are--"