I'm not interested. I never was interested. War is a man's

business, not a woman's. All I'm interested in now is a good

cotton crop. Now take this dollar and buy little Joe a dress. God

knows, he needs it. I'm not going to rob you of your corn, for all

Alex and Tony's politeness."

The boys followed her to the wagon and assisted her in, courtly for

all their rags, gay with the volatile Fontaine gaiety, but with the

picture of their destitution in her eyes, she shivered as she drove

away from Mimosa. She was so tired of poverty and pinching. What

a pleasure it would be to know people who were rich and not worried

as to where the next meal was coming from!

Cade Calvert was at home at Pine Bloom and, as Scarlett came up the

steps of the old house in which she had danced so often in happier

days, she saw that death was in his face. He was emaciated and he

coughed as he lay in an easy chair in the sunshine with a shawl

across his knees, but his face lit up when he saw her. Just a

little cold which had settled in his chest, he said, trying to rise

to greet her. Got it from sleeping so much in the rain. But it

would be gone soon and then he'd lend a hand in the work.

Cathleen Calvert, who came out of the house at the sound of voices,

met Scarlett's eyes above her brother's head and in them Scarlett

read knowledge and bitter despair. Cade might not know but

Cathleen knew. Pine Bloom looked straggly and overgrown with

weeds, seedling pines were beginning to show in the fields and the

house was sagging and untidy. Cathleen was thin and taut.

The two of them, with their Yankee stepmother, their four little

half-sisters, and Hilton, the Yankee overseer, remained in the

silent, oddly echoing house. Scarlett had never liked Hilton any

more than she liked their own overseer Jonas Wilkerson, and she

liked him even less now, as he sauntered forward and greeted her

like an equal. Formerly he had the same combination of servility

and impertinence which Wilkerson possessed but now, with Mr.

Calvert and Raiford dead in the war and Cade sick, he had dropped

all servility. The second Mrs. Calvert had never known how to

compel respect from negro servants and it was not to be expected

that she could get it from a white man.

"Mr. Hilton has been so kind about staying with us through these

difficult times," said Mrs. Calvert nervously, casting quick

glances at her silent stepdaughter. "Very kind. I suppose you

heard how he saved our house twice when Sherman was here. I'm sure

I don't know how we would have managed without him, with no money

and Cade--"

A flush went over Cade's white face and Cathleen's long lashes

veiled her eyes as her mouth hardened. Scarlett knew their souls

were writhing in helpless rage at being under obligations to their

Yankee overseer. Mrs. Calvert seemed ready to weep. She had

somehow made a blunder. She was always blundering. She just

couldn't understand Southerners, for all that she had lived in

Georgia twenty years. She never knew what not to say to her

stepchildren and, no matter what she said or did, they were always

so exquisitely polite to her. Silently she vowed she would go

North to her own people, taking her children with her, and leave

these puzzling stiff-necked strangers.

After these visits, Scarlett had no desire to see the Tarletons.

Now that the four boys were gone, the house burned and the family

cramped in the overseer's cottage, she could not bring herself to

go. But Suellen and Carreen begged and Melanie said it would be

unneighborly not to call and welcome Mr. Tarleton back from the

war, so one Sunday they went.

This was the worst of all.

As they drove up by the ruins of the house, they saw Beatrice

Tarleton dressed in a worn riding habit, a crop under her arm,

sitting on the top rail of the fence about the paddock, staring

moodily at nothing. Beside her perched the bow-legged little negro

who had trained her horses and he looked as glum as his mistress.

The paddock, once full of frolicking colts and placid brood mares,

was empty now except for one mule, the mule Mr. Tarleton had ridden

home from the surrender.

"I swear I don't know what to do with myself now that my darlings

are gone," said Mrs. Tarleton, climbing down from the fence. A

stranger might have thought she spoke of her four dead sons, but

the girls from Tara knew her horses were in her mind. "All my

beautiful horses dead. And oh, my poor Nellie! If I just had

Nellie! And nothing but a damned mule on the place. A damned

mule," she repeated, looking indignantly at the scrawny beast.

"It's an insult to the memory of my blooded darlings to have a mule