Inheritance, had tripled in value since the war began. It was

when Uncle Henry was giving her an account of her property that he

broached the matter of her permanent residence in Atlanta.

"When Wade Hampton comes of age, he's going to be a rich young

man," he said. "The way Atlanta is growing his property will be

ten times more valuable in twenty years, and it's only right that

the boy should be raised where his property is, so he can learn to

take care of it--yes, and of Pitty's and Melanie's, too. He'll be

the only man of the Hamilton name left before long, for I won't be

here forever."

As for Uncle Peter, he took it for granted that Scarlett had come

to stay. It was inconceivable to him that Charles' only son

should be reared where he could not supervise the rearing. To all

these arguments, Scarlett smiled but said nothing, unwilling to

commit herself before learning how she would like Atlanta and

constant association with her in-laws. She knew, too, that Gerald

and Ellen would have to be won over. Moreover, now that she was

away from Tara, she missed it dreadfully, missed the red fields

and the springing green cotton and the sweet twilight silences.

For the first time, she realized dimly what Gerald had meant when

he said that the love of the land was in her blood.

So she gracefully evaded, for the time being, a definite answer as

to the duration of her visit and slipped easily into the life of

the red-brick house at the quiet end of Peachtree Street.

Living with Charles' blood kin, seeing the home from which he

came. Scarlett could now understand a little better the boy who

had made her wife, widow and mother in such rapid succession. It

was easy to see why he had been so shy, so unsophisticated, so

idealistic. If Charles had inherited any of the qualities of the

stern, fearless, hot-tempered soldier who had been his father,

they had been obliterated in childhood by the ladylike atmosphere

in which he had been reared. He had been devoted to the childlike

Pitty and closer than brothers usually are to Melanie, and two

more sweet, unworldly women could not be found.

Aunt Pittypat had been christened Sarah Jane Hamilton sixty years

before, but since the long-past day when her doting father had

fastened his nickname upon her, because of her airy, restless,

pattering little feet, no one had called her anything else. In

the years that followed that second christening, many changes had

taken place in her that made the pet name incongruous. Of the

swiftly scampering child, all that now remained were two tiny

feet, inadequate to her weight, and a tendency to prattle happily

and aimlessly. She was stout, pink-cheeked and silver-haired and

always a little breathless from too tightly laced stays. She was

unable to walk more than a block on the tiny feet which she

crammed into too small slippers. She had a heart which fluttered

at any excitement and she pampered it shamelessly, fainting at any

provocation. Everyone knew that her swoons were generally mere

ladylike pretenses but they loved her enough to refrain from

saying so. Everyone loved her, spoiled her like a child and

refused to take her seriously--everyone except her brother Henry.

She liked gossip better than anything else in the world, even more

than she liked the pleasures of the table, and she prattled on for

hours about other people's affairs in a harmless kindly way. She

had no memory for names, dates or places and frequently confused

the actors in one Atlanta drama with the actors in another, which

misled no one for no one was foolish enough to take seriously

anything she said. No one ever told her anything really shocking

or scandalous, for her spinster state must be protected even if

she was sixty years old, and her friends were in a kindly

conspiracy to keep her a sheltered and petted old child.

Melanie was like her aunt in many ways. She had her shyness, her

sudden blushes, her modesty, but she did have common sense--"Of a

sort, I'll admit that," Scarlett thought grudgingly. Like Aunt

Pitty, Melanie had the face of a sheltered child who had never

known anything but simplicity and kindness, truth and love, a

child who had never looked upon harshness or evil and would not

recognize them if she saw them. Because she had always been

happy, she wanted everyone about her to be happy or, at least,

pleased with themselves. To this end, she always saw the best in

everyone and remarked kindly upon it. There was no servant so

stupid that she did not find some redeeming trait of loyalty and

kind-heartedness, no girl so ugly and disagreeable that she could

not discover grace of form or nobility of character in her, and no

man so worthless or so boring that she did not view him in the

light of his possibilities rather than his actualities.

Because of these qualities that came sincerely and spontaneously

from a generous heart, everyone flocked about her, for who can

resist the charm of one who discovers in others admirable

qualities undreamed of even by himself? She had more girl friends

than anyone in town and more men friends too, though she had few

beaux for she lacked the willfulness and selfishness that go far

toward trapping men's hearts.

What Melanie did was no more than all Southern girls were taught

to do--to make those about them feel at ease and pleased with

themselves. It was this happy feminine conspiracy which made

Southern society so pleasant. Women knew that a land where men

were contented, uncontradicted and safe in possession of

unpunctured vanity was likely to be a very pleasant place for

women to live. So, from the cradle to the grave, women strove to

make men pleased with themselves, and the satisfied men repaid

lavishly with gallantry and adoration. In fact, men willingly

gave the ladies everything in the world except credit for having

intelligence. Scarlett exercised the same charms as Melanie but

with a studied artistry and consummate skill. The difference

between the two girls lay in the fact that Melanie spoke kind and

flattering words from a desire to make people happy, if only

temporarily, and Scarlett never did it except to further her own

aims.

From the two he loved best, Charles had received no toughening

influences, learned nothing of harshness or reality, and the home

in which he grew to manhood was as soft as a bird's nest. It was

such a quiet, old-fashioned, gentle home compared with Tara. To

Scarlett, this house cried out for the masculine smells of brandy,

tobacco and Macassar oil, for hoarse voices and occasional curses,

for guns, for whiskers, for saddles and bridles and for hounds

underfoot. She missed the sounds of quarreling voices that were

always heard at Tara when Ellen's back was turned, Mammy quarreling

with Pork, Rosa and Teena bickering, her own acrimonious arguments

with Suellen, Gerald's bawling threats. No wonder Charles had been

a sissy, coming from a home like this. Here, excitement never

entered in, voices were never raised, everyone deferred gently to

the opinions of others, and, in the end, the black grizzled autocrat

in the kitchen had his way. Scarlett, who had hoped for a freer

rein when she escaped Mammy's supervision, discovered to her sorrow

that Uncle Peter's standards of ladylike conduct, especially for

Mist' Charles' widow, were even stricter than Mammy's.

In such a household, Scarlett came back to herself, and almost

before she realized it her spirits rose to normal. She was only

seventeen, she had superb health and energy, and Charles' people

did their best to make her happy. If they fell a little short of

this, it was not their fault, for no one could take out of her

heart the ache that throbbed whenever Ashley's name was mentioned.

And Melanie mentioned it so often! But Melanie and Pitty were

tireless in planning ways to soothe the sorrow under which they

thought she labored. They put their own grief into the background

in order to divert her. They fussed about her food and her hours

for taking afternoon naps and for taking carriage rides. They not

only admired her extravagantly, her high-spiritedness, her figure,

her tiny hands and feet, her white skin, but they said so

frequently, petting, hugging and kissing her to emphasize their

loving words.

Scarlett did not care for the caresses, but she basked in the

compliments. No one at Tara had ever said so many charming things

about her. In fact, Mammy had spent her time deflating her

conceit. Little Wade was no longer an annoyance, for the family,

black and white, and the neighbors idolized him and there was a

never-ceasing rivalry as to whose lap he should occupy. Melanie

especially doted on him. Even in his worst screaming spells,

Melanie thought him adorable and said so, adding, "Oh, you

precious darling! I just wish you were mine!"

Sometimes Scarlett found it hard to dissemble her feelings, for

she still thought Aunt Pitty the silliest of old ladies and her

vagueness and vaporings irritated her unendurably. She disliked

Melanie with a jealous dislike that grew as the days went by, and

sometimes she had to leave the room abruptly when Melanie, beaming

with loving pride, spoke of Ashley or read his letters aloud.

But, all in all, life went on as happily as was possible under the

circumstances. Atlanta was more interesting than Savannah or

Charleston or Tara and it offered so many strange war-time

occupations she had little time to think or mope. But, sometimes,

when she blew out the candle and burrowed her head into the

pillow, she sighed and thought: "If only Ashley wasn't married!

If only I didn't have to nurse in that plagued hospital! Oh, if

only I could have some beaux!"

She had immediately loathed nursing but she could not escape this

duty because she was on both Mrs. Meade's and Mrs. Merriwether's

committees. That meant four mornings a week in the sweltering,

stinking hospital with her hair tied up in a towel and a hot apron

covering her from neck to feet. Every matron, old or young, in

Atlanta nursed and did it with an enthusiasm that seemed to

Scarlett little short of fanatic. They took it for granted that

she was imbued with their own patriotic fervor and would have been

shocked to know how slight an interest in the war she had. Except

for the ever-present torment that Ashley might be killed, the war