| "I thought you'd
skin them alive, Beatrice
"They always grew back the skin," MrsTarleton said, smiling"I
tried to break their legs when they set the ice house on fire, but they
ran too fast for me to catch them That was the time they came over
to Lovejoy and hid in our barn," said Sally"The cows went dry for a
week when the twins tried to get themselves a pail of milk to drink
Everyone had a story about the Tarleton twins, and those stories led to
others about their friends and older brothers-Lafe Munroe, Cade and
Raiford Calvert, Tom and Boyd Tarleton, Joe Fontaine-all the boys
who'd
never come homeThe stories were the shared wealth of memory and
of
love, and as they were told the shadows in the corners of the room
became populated with the smiling, shining youth of those who were
dead
but now-at last-no longer lost because they could be remembered with
fond laughter instead of desperate bitternessThe older generation
wasn't forgotten, eitherAll those around the table had louis vuitton white speedy 35 rich memories
of Old Miss Fontaine, Alex and Tony's sharp-tongued, soft-hearted
grandmotherAnd of their mother, called Young Miss until the day she
died on her sixtieth birthdayScarlett discovered that she could even
share the affectionate chuckling about her father's tell-tale habit of
singing Irish songs of rebellion when he had, as he put it, "taken a
drop or two," and even hear her mother's kindness spoken of without
the
heartbreak that had always before been her immediate response to
the
mention of Ellen O'Hara's name
Hour after hour, long after plates were empty and the fire only embers
on the hearth, still the talk went on, and the dozen survivors brought
back to life all those loved ones who could not be there to welcome
Tony homeIt was a happy time, a healing time
The dim, flickering light of the oil lamp in the center of the table
showed none of the scars of Sherman's men in the smoke-stained
room and
its mended furnitureThe faces around the table were without chanel bucket bag lines,
the clothes without patchesFor these sweet moments of illusion, it
was as if Mimosa was transported to a timeless place and hour where
there was no pain and there had never been a WarMany years
before,
Scarlett had vowed to herself that she would never look back
Remembering the halcyon preWar days, mourning them, yearning for
them
would only hurt and weaken her, and she needed all her strength and
determination to survive and to protect her familyBut the shared
memories in the dining room at Mimosa were not at all a source of
weaknessThey gave her courage; they were proof that good people
could suffer every kind of loss and still retain the capacity for love
and laughterShe was proud to be included in their number, proud to
call them her friends, proud that they were what they wereWill
walked in front of the buggy on the way home, carrying a pitch pine
torch and leading the horseIt was a dark night, and it was very
late
Overhead the stars were bright in a cloudless sky, so bright necklace tiffany that the
quarter-moon looked almost transparently paleThe only sound was
the
slow clop-clop of the horse's hoovesSuellen dozed olf, but Scarlett
fought her sleepinessShe didn't want the evening to end, she
wanted
the warm comfort and happiness of it to last foreverHow strong Tony
looked! And so full of life, so pleased with his funny boots, with
himself, with everythingThe Tarleton girls acted like a bunch of
red-haired tabby kittens looking at a bowl of creamI wonder which
one will catch himBeatrice Tarleton's sure going to see to it that
one of them does! An owl in the woods beside the road said "whoo,
whoo?" and Scarlett giggled to herselfThey were more than halfway
to Tara before she realized that she hadn't thought about Rhett for
hoursThen melancholy and worry clamped down on her like lead
weights, and she noticed for the first time that the night air was cold
and her body was chilledShe pulled her shawl close around her and
silently urged Will to hurryI don't want to dolce and gabbana handbag think about anything,
not tonight
I don't want to spoil the good time I hadHurry, Will, it's cold and
it's darkThe next morning Scarlett and Suellen drove the children
over in the wagon to MimosaWade was shiny-eyed with hero worship
when Tony showed off his six-gunsEven Scarlett's jaw dropped in
astounded delight when Tony twirled them around his fingers in
unison,
sent them circling in the air, then caught them and dropped them in
the
holsters that hung low on his hips from a fancy silvertrimmed leather
belt"Do they shoor, too?" Wade askedAnd when you get a little older I'll teach you
how to use them"Spin them like you do?"
"Well, sureNo sense having a six-shooter if you're not going to put
it through all its tricks Tony ruffled Wade's hair with a manto-man
rough hand
"I'll let you learn to ride Western, too, Wade HamptonI reckon
you'll be the only boy in these parts that'll know what a real saddle
ought to beBut we can't start todayMy brother's going to be
giving me lessons in tiffany canada far |