Scar'lett turned smiling green eyes upon her younger sister, wondering how anyone could be so sweet. The whole family knew that Carreen's thirteen-year-old heart was set upon Brent Tarleton, who never gave her a thought except as Scarlett's baby sister.When Ellen was not present, the O'Haras teased her to tears about him.
“Darling, I don't care a thing about Brent,”declared Scarlett, happy enough to be generous.“And he doesn't care a thing about me. Why, he's waiting for you to grow up!”
Carreen's round little face became pink, as pleasure struggled with incredulity.
“Oh, Scarlett, really?”
“Scarlett, you know Mother said Carreen was too young to think about beaux yet, and there you go putting ideas in her head.”
“Well, go and tattle and see if I care,”replied Scarlett.“You want to hold Sissy back, because you know she's going to be prettier than you in a year or so.”
“You'll be keeping civil tongues in your heads this day, or I'll be taking me crop to you,”warned Gerald.“Now whist!Is it wheels I'm hearing?That'll be the Tarletons or the Fontaines.”
As they neared the intersecting road that came down the thickly wooded hill from Mimosa and Fairhill, the sound of hooves and carriage wheels became plainer and clamorous feminine voices raised in pleasant dispute sounded from behind the screen of trees. Gerald, riding ahead, pulled up his horse and signed to Toby to stop the carriage where the two roads met.
“‘Tis the Tarleton ladies,”he announced to his daughters, his florid face abeam, for excepting Ellen there was no lady in the County he liked more than the redhaired Mrs. Tarleton.“And'tis herself at the reins.Ah, there's a woman with fine hands for a horse!Feather light and strong as rawhide, and pretty enough to kiss for all that.More's the pity none of you have such hands,”he added, casting fond but reproving glances at his girls.“With Carreen afraid of the poor beasts and Sue with hands like sadirons when it comes to reins and you, Puss—”
“Well, at any rate I've never been thrown,”cried Scarlett indignantly.“And Mrs. Tarleton takes a toss at every hunt.”
“And breaks a collar bone like a man,”said Gerald.“No fainting, no fussing. Now, no more of it, for here she comes.”
He stood up in his stirrups and took off his hat with a sweep, as the Tarleton carriage, overflowing with girls in bright dresses and parasols and fluttering veils, came into view, with Mrs. Tarleton on the box as Gerald had said.With her four daughters, their mammy and their ball dresses in long cardboard boxes crowding the carriage, there was no room for the coachman.And, besides, Beatrice Tarleton never willingly permitted anyone, black or white, to hold reins when her arms were out of slings.Frail, fine-boned, so white of skin that her flaming hair seemed to have drawn all the color from her face into its vital burnished mass, she was nevertheless possessed of exuberant health and untiring energy.She had borne eight children, as red of hair and as full of life as she, and had raised them moat successfully, so the County said, because she gave them all the loving neglect and the stern discipline she gave the colts she bred.“Curb them but don't break their spirits,”was Mrs.Tarleton's motto.
She loved horses and talked horses constantly. She understood them and handled them better than any man in the County.Colts overflowed the paddock onto the front lawn, even as her eight children overflowed the rambling house on the hill, and colts and sons and daughters and hunting dogs tagged after her as she went about the plantation.She credited her horses, especially her red mare, Nellie, with human intelligence;and if the cares of the house kept her busy beyond the time when she expected to take her daily ride, she put the sugar bowl in the hands of some small pickaninny and said:“Give Nellie a handful and tell her I'll be out terrectly.”
Except on rare occasions she always wore her riding habit, for whether she rode or not she always expected to ride and in that expectation put on her habit upon arising. Each morning, rain or shine, Nellie was saddled and walked up and down in front of the house, waiting for the time when Mrs.Tarleton could spare an hour away from her duties.But Fairhill was a difficult plantation to manage and spare time hard to get, and more often than not Nellie walked upand down riderless hour after hour, while Beatrice Tarleton went through the day with the skirt of her habit absently looped up over her arm and six inches of shining boot showing below it.
Today, dressed in dull black silk over unfashionably narrow hoops, she still looked as though in her habit, for the dress was as severely tailored as her riding costume and the small black hat with its long black plume perched over one warm, twinkling, brown eye was a replica of the battered old hat she used for hunting.
She waved her whip when she saw Gerald and drew her dancing pair of red horses to a halt, and the four girls in the back of the carriage leaned out and gave such vociferous cries of greeting that the team pranced in alarm. To a casual observer it would seem that years had passed since the Tarletons had seen the O'Haras, instead of only two days.But they were a sociable family and liked their neighbors, especially the O'Hara girls.That is, they liked Suellen and Carreen.No girl in the County, with the possible exception of the empty-headed Cathleen Calvert, really liked Scarlett.