In summers, the County averaged a barbecue and ball nearly every week, but to the red-haired Tarletons with their enormous capacity for enjoying themselves, each barbecue and each ball was as exciting as if it were the first they had ever attended. They were a pretty buxom quartette, so crammed into the carriage that their hoops and flounces overlapped and their parasols nudged and bumped together above their wide leghorn sun hats, crowned with roses and dangling with black velvet chin ribbons.All shades of red hair were represented beneath these hats, Hetty's plain red hair, Camilla's,strawberry blonde, Randa's coppery auburn and small Betsy's carrot top.
“That's a fine bevy, Ma'm,”said Gerald gallantly, reining his horse alongside the carriage.“But it's far they'll go to beat their mother.”
Mrs. Tarleton rolled her red-brown eyes and sucked in her lower lip in burlesqued appreciation, and the girls cried,“Ma, stop making eyes or we'll tell Pa!I vow, Mr.O'Hara, she never gives us a chance when there's a handsome man like you around!”
Scarlett laughed with the rest at these sallies but, as always, the freedom with which the Tarletons treated their mother came as a shock. They acted as ifshe were one of themselves and not a day over sixteen.To Scarlett, the very idea of saying such things to her own mother was almost sacrilegious.And yet—and yet—there was something very pleasant about the Tarleton girls'relations with their mother, and they adored her for all that they criticized and scolded and teased her.Not, Scarlett loyally hastened to tell herself, that she would prefer a mother like Mrs.Tarleton to Ellen, but still it would be fun to romp with a mother.She knew that even that thought was disrespectful to Ellen and felt ashamed of it.She knew no such troublesome thoughts ever disturbed the brains under the four flaming thatches in the carriage and, as always when she felt herself different from her neighbors, an irritated confusion fell upon her.
Quick though her brain was, it was not made for analysis, but she halfconsciously realized that, for all the Tarleton girls were as unruly as colts and wild as March hares, there was an unworried single-mindedness about them that was part of their inheritance. On both their mother's and their father's side they were Georgians, north Georgians, only a generation away from pioneers.They were sure of themselves and of their environment.They knew instinctively what they were about, as did the Wilkeses, though in widely divergent ways, arid in them there was no such conflict as frequently raged in Scarlett's bosom where the blood of a softvoiced, overbred Coast aristocrat mingled with the shrewd, earthy blood of an Irish peasant.Scarlett wanted to respect and adore her mother like an idol and to rumple her hair and tease her too.And she knew she should be altogether one way or the other.It was the same conflicting emotion that made her desire to appear a delicate and high-bred lady with boys and to be, as well, a hoyden who was not above a few kisses.
“Where's Ellen this morning?”asked Mrs. Tarleton.
“She's after discharging our overseer and stayed home to go over the accounts with him. Where's himself and the lads?”
“Oh, they rode over to Twelve Oaks hours ago—to sample the punch and see if it was strong enough, I dare say, as if they wouldn't have from now till tomorrow morning to do it!I'm going to ask John Wilkes to keep them overnight, even if he has to bed them down in the stable. Five men in their cupsare just too much for me.Up to three, I do very well but—”
Gerald hastily interrupted to change the subject. He could feel his own daughters snickering behind his back as they remembered in what condition he had come home from the Wilkeses'last barbecue the autumn before.
“And why aren't you riding today, Mrs. Tarleton?Sure, you don't look yourself at all without Nellie.It's a stentor, you are.”
“A stentor, me ignorant broth of a boy!”cried Mrs. Tarleton, aping his brogue.“You mean a centaur.Stentor was a man with a voice like a brass gong.”
“Stentor or centaur,'tis no matter,”answered Gerald, unruffled by his error.
“And'tis a voice like brass you have, Ma'm, when you're urging on the hounds, so it is.”
“That's one on you, Ma,”said Hetty.“I told you you yelled like a Comanche whenever you saw a fox.”
“But not as loud as you yell when Mammy washes your ears,”returned Mrs. Tarleton.“And you sixteen!Well, as to why I'm not riding today, Nellie foaled early this morning.”
“Did she now!”cried Gerald with real interest, his Irishman's passion for horses shining in his eyes, and Scarlett again felt the sense of shock in comparing her mother with Mrs. Tarleton.To Ellen, mares never foaled nor cows.calved.In fact, hens almost didn't lay eggs.Ellen ignored these matters completely.But Mrs.Tarleton had no such reticences.
“A little filly, was it?”
“No, a fine little stallion with legs two yards long. You must ride over and see him, Mr.O'Hara.He's a real Tarleton horse.He's as red as Hetty's curls.”
“And looks a lot like Hetty, too,”said Camilla, and then disappeared shrieking amid a welter of skirts and pantalets and bobbing hats, as Hetty, who did have a long face, began pinching her.