In the fields and then they, too, would come to town.

The little brick house that Ashley took for his family was on Ivy

Street directly behind Aunt Pitty's house and the two back yards

ran together, divided only by a ragged overgrown privet hedge.

Melanie had chosen it especially for this reason. She said, on the

first morning of her return to Atlanta as she laughed and cried and

embraced Scarlett and Aunt Pitty, she had been separated from her

loved ones for so long that she could never be close enough to them

again.

The house had originally been two stories high but the upper floor

had been destroyed by shells during the siege and the owner,

returning after the surrender, had lacked the money to replace it.

He had contented himself with putting a flat roof on the remaining

first floor which gave the building the squat, disproportionate

look of a child's playhouse built of shoe boxes. The house was

high from the ground, built over a large cellar, and the long

sweeping flight of stairs which reached it made it look slightly

ridiculous. But the flat, squashed look of the place was partly

redeemed by the two fine old oaks which shaded it and a dusty-

leaved magnolia, splotched with white blossoms, standing beside the

front steps. The lawn was wide and green with thick clover and

bordering it was a straggling, unkempt privet hedge, interlaced

with sweet-smelling honeysuckle vines. Here and there in the

grass, roses threw out sprangles from crushed old stems and pink

and white crepe myrtle bloomed as valiantly as if war had not

passed over their heads and Yankee horses gnawed their boughs.

Scarlett thought it quite the ugliest dwelling she had ever seen

but, to Melanie, Twelve Oaks in all its grandeur had not been more

beautiful. It was home and she and Ashley and Beau were at last

together under their own roof.

India Wilkes came back from Macon, where she and Honey had lived

since 1864, and took up her residence with her brother, crowding

the occupants of the little house. But Ashley and Melanie welcomed

her. Times had changed, money was scarce, but nothing had altered

the rule of Southern life that families always made room gladly for

indigent or unmarried female relatives.

Honey had married and, so India said, married beneath her, a coarse

Westerner from Mississippi who had settled in Macon. He had a red

face and a loud voice and jolly ways. India had not approved of

the match and, not approving, had not been happy in her brother-in-

law's home. She welcomed the news that Ashley now had a home of

his own, so she could remove herself from uncongenial surroundings

and also from the distressing sight of her sister so fatuously

happy with a man unworthy of her.

The rest of the family privately thought that the giggling and

simple-minded Honey had done far better than could be expected and

they marveled that she had caught any man. Her husband was a

gentleman and a man of some means; but to India, born in Georgia

and reared in Virginia traditions, anyone not from the eastern

seaboard was a boor and a barbarian. Probably Honey's husband was

as happy to be relieved of her company as she was to leave him, for