people and get back to others, and God knows I hope William will have a
little respite before Lizzie joins him.

"I don't know Mr. Pryor very well," said Mrs. Brent, who had moved
closer to the table in the general uprising due to Mrs. Pryor's
departure, "but I've always felt sorry for him somehow. He had such
a patient, frightened face, and was so polite."

"That was what ruined him." Miss Gibbie's voice was steady again.
"Many wives are ruined by over-politeness. They take advantage of it,
and make their husbands spend their lives in an eternal effort to
please. That's what poor William was forever attempting to do, and
never succeeding. He was Apology in the flesh. No matter what he
did in the morning he had to explain it at night."

"He had to," broke in Mrs. Tate, who still held her needle between
finger and thumb. "If he didn't, Mrs. Pryor breathed so through her
nose you couldn't say in the house with her. I was there once when she
wanted to go to her sister's in Washington to get new dresses for
Maria and Anna Belle and Sue, and Mr. Pryor had ventured to say he
didn't have the money. You ought to have seen her! She hardly spoke
to me, and Louisa told me afterward they didn't see her teeth for a
week, she kept her lips down on them so tight. Poor Mr. Pryor, I saw
him a day or two afterward on his way home to dinner, and he looked
like he would rather go to--"

"Hell. Speak out. I would, had I been he." Miss Gibbie blew her nose,
put the handkerchief back in the bag hanging from her belt, took out her
spectacles and laid them on the table. "Any kind of woman can be
endured better than a sulking woman. She's worse than a nagger, and