Inevitable time when warm clothing would be needed. And each warm

day saw more and more cotton piling up in the empty slave quarters,

the only storage place left on the plantation. There was more

cotton in the fields than she or Pork had estimated, probably four

bales, and soon the cabins would be full.

Scarlett had not intended to do any cotton picking herself, even

after Grandma Fontaine's tart remark. It was unthinkable that she,

an O'Hara lady, now the mistress of Tara, should work in the

fields. It put her on the same level with the snarly haired Mrs.

Slattery and Emmie. She had intended that the negroes should do

the field work, while she and the convalescent girls attended to

the house, but here she was confronted with a caste feeling even

stronger than her own. Pork, Mammy and Prissy set up outcries at

the idea of working in the fields. They reiterated that they were

house niggers, not field hands. Mammy, in particular, declared

Vehemently that she had never even been a yard nigger. She had

been born in the Robillard great house, not in the quarters, and

had been raised in Ole Miss' bedroom, sleeping on a pallet at the

foot of the bed. Dilcey alone said nothing and she fixed her

Prissy with an unwinking eye that made her squirm.

Scarlett refused to listen to the protests and drove them all into

the cotton rows. But Mammy and Pork worked so slowly and with so

many lamentations that Scarlett sent Mammy back to the kitchen to

cook and Pork to the woods and the river with snares for rabbits

and possums and lines for fish. Cotton picking was beneath Pork's

dignity but hunting and fishing were not.

Scarlett next had tried her sisters and Melanie in the fields, but

that had worked no better. Melanie had picked neatly, quickly and

willingly for an hour in the hot sun and then fainted quietly and

had to stay in bed for a week. Suellen, sullen and tearful,

pretended to faint too, but came back to consciousness spitting

like an angry cat when Scarlett poured a gourdful of water in her

face. Finally she refused point-blank.

"I won't work in the fields like a darky! You can't make me. What

if any of our friends ever heard of it? What if--if Mr. Kennedy

ever knew? Oh, if Mother knew about this--"

"You just mention Mother's name once more, Suellen O'Hara, and I'll

slap you flat," cried Scarlett. "Mother worked harder than any

darky on this place and you know it, Miss Fine Airs!"

"She did not! At least, not in the fields. And you can't make me.

I'll tell Papa on you and he won't make me work!"

"Don't you dare go bothering Pa with any of our troubles!" cried

Scarlett, distracted between indignation at her sister and fear for

Gerald.

"I'll help you, Sissy," interposed Carreen docilely. "I'll work

for Sue and me too. She isn't well yet and she shouldn't be out in

the sun."

Scarlett said gratefully: "Thank you, Sugarbaby," but looked

worriedly at her younger sister. Carreen, who had always been as

delicately pink and white as the orchard blossoms that are

scattered by the spring wind, was no longer pink but still conveyed

in her sweet thoughtful face a blossomlike quality. She had been

silent, a little dazed since she came back to consciousness and

found Ellen gone, Scarlett a termagant, the world changed and

unceasing labor the order of the new day. It was not in Carreen's

delicate nature to adjust herself to change. She simply could not

comprehend what had happened and she went about Tara like a

sleepwalker, doing exactly what she was told. She looked, and was,

frail but she was willing, obedient and obliging. When she was not

doing Scarlett's bidding, her rosary beads were always in her hands

and her lips moving in prayers for her mother and for Brent

Tarleton. It did not occur to Scarlett that Carreen had taken

Brent's death so seriously and that her grief was unhealed. To

Scarlet, Carreen was still "baby sister," far too young to have had

a really serious love affair.

Scarlett, standing in the sun in the cotton rows, her back breaking

from the eternal bending and her hands roughened by the dry bolls,

wished she had a sister who combined Suellen's energy and strength

with Carreen's sweet disposition. For Carreen picked diligently

and earnestly. But, after she had labored for an hour it was

obvious that she, and not Suellen, was the one not yet well enough

for such work. So Scarlett sent Carreen back to the house too.

There remained with her now in the long rows only Dilcey and

Prissy. Prissy picked lazily, spasmodically, complaining of her

feet, her back, her internal miseries, her complete weariness,

until her mother took a cotton stalk to her and whipped her until

she screamed. After that she worked a little better, taking care

to stay far from her mother's reach.

Dilcey worked tirelessly, silently, like a machine, and Scarlett,

with her back aching and her shoulder raw from the tugging weight

of the cotton bag she carried, thought that Dilcey was worth her

weight in gold.

"Dilcey," she said, "when good times come back, I'm not going to

forget how you've acted. You've been mighty good."

The bronze giantess did not grin pleasedly or squirm under praise

like the other negroes. She turned an immobile face to Scarlett

and said with dignity: "Thankee, Ma'm. But Mist' Gerald and Miss

Ellen been good to me. Mist' Gerald buy my Prissy so I wouldn'

grieve and I doan forgit it. I is part Indian and Indians doan

forgit them as is good to them. I sorry 'bout my Prissy. She

mighty wuthless. Look lak she all nigger lak her pa. Her pa was

mighty flighty."