He colored with pleasure at the obvious sincerity of her words, hastily squirted a stream of tobacco juice from the opposite side of the buggy and leaped spryly to the ground. He shook her hand enthusiastically and holding up the tarpaulin, assisted her into the buggy.
"Miss Scarlett, what are you doing over in this section by yourself? Don't you know ifs dangerous these days? And you are soaking wet. Here, wrap the robe around your feet."
As he fussed over her, clucking like a hen, she gave herself up to the luxury of being taken care of. It was nice to have a man fussing and clucking and scolding, even if it was only that old maid in pants, Frank Kennedy. It was especially soothing after Rhett's brutal treatment. And oh, how good to see a County face when she was so far from home! He was well dressed, she noticed, and the buggy was new too. The horse looked young and well fed, but Frank looked far older than his years, older than on that Christmas eve when he had been at Tara with his men. He was thin and sallow faced and his yellow eyes were watery and sunken in creases of loose flesh. His ginger-colored beard was scantier than ever, streaked with tobacco juice and as ragged as if he clawed at it incessantly. But he looked bright and cheerful, in contrast with the lines of sorrow and worry and weariness which Scarlett saw in faces everywhere.
"It's a pleasure to see you," said Frank warmly. I didn't know you were in town. I saw Miss Pittypat only last week and she didn't tell me you were coming. Did -- er -- ahem -- did anyone else come op from Tara with you?"
He was thinking of Suellen, the silly old fool!
"No," she said, wrapping the warm lap robe about her and trying to pull it up around her neck. "I came alone. I didn't give Aunt Pitty any warning."
He chirruped to the horse and it plodded off, picking its way carefully down the slick road.
"All the folks at Tara well?"
"Oh, yes, so-so."
She must think of something to talk about, yet it was so hard to talk. Her mind was leaden with defeat and all she wanted was to lie back in this warm blanket and say to herself: I won't think of Tara now. I'll think of it later, when it won't hurt so much." If she could just get him started talking on some subject which would hold him all the way home, so she would have nothing to do but murmur "How nice" and "You certainly are smart" at intervals.
"Mr. Kennedy, I'm so surprised to see you. I know I've been a bad girl, not keeping up with old friends, but I didn't know you were here in Atlanta. I thought somebody told me you were in Marietta."
"I do business in Marietta, a lot of business," he said. "Didn't Miss Suellen tell you I had settled in Atlanta? Didn't she tell you about my store?"
Vaguely she had a memory of Suellen chattering about Frank and a store but she never paid much heed to anything Suellen said. It had been sufficient to know that Frank was alive and would some day take Suellen off her hands.
"No, not a word," she lied. "Have you a store? How smart you must be!"
He looked a little hurt at hearing that Suellen had not published the news but brightened at the flattery.
"Yes, I've got a store, and a pretty good one I think. Folks tell me I'm a born merchant." He laughed pleasedly, the tittery cackling laugh which she always found so annoying.
Conceited old fool, she thought.
"Oh, you could be a success at anything you turned your hand to, Mr. Kennedy. But how on earth did you ever get started with the store? When I saw you Christmas before last you said you didn't have a cent in the world."
He cleared his throat raspingly, clawed at his whiskers and smiled his nervous timid smile.
"Well, it's a long story, Miss Scarlett."
Thank the Lord! she tho
ught. Perhaps it will hold him till we get home. And aloud: "Do tell!"
"You recall when we came to Tara last, hunting for supplies? Well, not long after that I went into active service. I mean real fighting. No more commissary for me. There wasn't much need for a commissary, Miss Scarlett, because we couldn't hardly pick up a thing for the army, and I thought the place for an able-bodied man was in the fighting line. Well, I fought along with the cavalry for a spell till I got a minie ball through the shoulder."
He looked very proud and Scarlett said: "How dreadful!"
"Oh, it wasn't so bad, just a flesh wound," he said deprecatingly. "I was sent down south to a hospital and when I was just about well, the Yankee raiders came through. My, my, but that was a hot time! We didn't have much warning and all of us who could walk helped haul out the army stores and the hospital equipment to the train tracks to move it. We'd gotten one train about loaded when the Yankees rode in one end of town and out we went the other end as fast as we could go. My, my, that was a mighty sad sight, sitting on top of that train and seeing the Yankees burn those supplies we had to leave at the depot. Miss Scarlett, they burned about a half-mile of stuff we had piled up there along the tracks. We just did get away ourselves."
"How dreadful!"
"Yes, that's the word. Dreadful. Our men had come back into Atlanta then and so our train was sent here. Well, Miss Scarlett, it wasn't long before the war was over and-- well, there was a lot of china and cots and mattresses and blankets and nobody claiming them. I suppose rightfully they belonged to the Yankees. I think those were the terms of the surrender, weren't they?"
"Um," said Scarlett absently. She was getting warmer now and a little drowsy.
"I don't know till now if I did right," he said, a little querulously. "But the way I figured it, all that stuff wouldn't do the Yankees a bit of good. They'd probably burn it. And our folks had paid good solid money for it, and I thought it still ought to belong to the Confederacy or to the Confederates. Do you see what I mean?"
"Um."