Intended to run it herself. "Go into the lumber business myself,"

was the way she put it. Frank would never forget the horror of

that moment. Go into business for herself! It was unthinkable.

There were no women in business in Atlanta. In fact, Frank had

never heard of a woman in business anywhere. If women were so

unfortunate as to be compelled to make a little money to assist

their families in these hard times, they made it in quiet womanly

ways--baking as Mrs. Merriwether was doing, or painting china and

sewing and keeping boarders, like Mrs. Elsing and Fanny, or

teaching school like Mrs. Meade or giving music lessons like Mrs.

Bonnell. These ladies made money but they kept themselves at home

while they did it, as a woman should. But for a woman to leave the

protection of her home and venture out into the rough world of men,

competing with them in business, rubbing shoulders with them, being

exposed to insult and gossip. . . . Especially when she wasn't

forced to do it, when she had a husband amply able to provide for

her!

Frank had hoped she was only teasing or playing a joke on him, a

joke of questionable taste, but he soon found she meant what she

said. She did operate the sawmill. She rose earlier than he did

to drive out Peachtree road and frequently did not come home until

long after he had locked up the store and returned to Aunt Pitty's

for supper. She drove the long miles to the mill with only the

disapproving Uncle Peter to protect her and the woods were full of

free niggers and Yankee riffraff. Frank couldn't go with her, the

store took all of his time, but when he protested, she said

shortly: "If I don't keep an eye on that slick scamp, Johnson,

he'll steal my lumber and sell it and put the money in his pocket.

When I can get a good man to run the mill for me, then I won't have

to go out there so often. Then I can spend my time in town selling

lumber."

Selling lumber in town! That was worst of all. She frequently did

take a day off from the mill and peddle lumber and, on those days,

Frank wished he could hide in the dark back room of his store and

see no one. His wife selling lumber!

And people were talking terrible about her. Probably about him

too, for permitting her to behave in so unwomanly a fashion. It

embarrassed him to face his customers over the counter and hear

them say: "I saw Mrs. Kennedy a few minutes ago over at . . ."

Everyone took pains to tell him what she did. Everyone was talking

about what happened over where the new hotel was being built.

Scarlett had driven up just as Tommy Wellburn was buying some

lumber from another man and she climbed down out of the buggy among

the rough Irish masons who were laying the foundations, and told

Tommy briefly that he was being cheated. She said her lumber was

better and cheaper too, and to prove it she ran up a long column of

figures in her head and gave him an estimate then and there. It

was bad enough that she had intruded herself among strange rough

workmen, but it was still worse for a woman to show publicly that

she could do mathematics like that. When Tommy accepted her

estimate and gave her the order, Scarlett had not taken her

departure speedily and meekly but had idled about, talking to

Johnnie Gallegher, the foreman of the Irish workers, a hard-bitten

little gnome of a man who had a very bad reputation. The town

talked about it for weeks.

On top of everything else, she was actually making money out of the

mill, and no man could feel right about a wife who succeeded in so

unwomanly an activity. Nor did she turn over the money or any part

of it to him to use in the store. Most of it went to Tara and she

wrote interminable letters to Will Benteen telling him just how it

should be spent. Furthermore, she told Frank that if the repairs

at Tara could ever be completed, she intended to lend out her money

on mortgages.

"My! My!" moaned Frank whenever he thought of this. A woman had

no business even knowing what a mortgage was.

Scarlett was full of plans these days and each one of them seemed

worse to Frank than the previous one. She even talked of building

a saloon on the property where her warehouse had been until Sherman

burned it. Frank was no teetotaler but he feverishly protested

against the idea. Owning saloon property was a bad business,

an unlucky business, almost as bad as renting to a house of

prostitution. Just why it was bad, he could not explain to her

and to his lame arguments she said "Fiddle-dee-dee!"

"Saloons are always good tenants. Uncle Henry said so," she told

him. "They always pay their rent and, look here, Frank, I could

put up a cheap salon out of poor-grade lumber I can't sell and get

good rent for it, and with the rent money and the money from the

mill and what I could get from mortgages, I could buy some more

sawmills."

"Sugar, you don't need any more sawmills!" cried Frank, appalled.

"What you ought to do is sell the one you've got. It's wearing you

out and you know what trouble you have keeping free darkies at work

there--"

"Free darkies are certainly worthless," Scarlett agreed, completely