It, the better we'll be."

But no one wanted to forget, no one, it seemed, except herself,

so Scarlett was glad when she could truthfully tell Melanie that

she was embarrassed at appearing, even in the darkness. This

explanation was readily understood by Melanie who was hypersensitive

about all matters relating to childbirth. Melanie wanted another

baby badly, but both Dr. Meade and Dr. Fontaine had said another

child would cost her her life. So, only half resigned to her fate,

she spent most of her time with Scarlett, vicariously enjoying a

pregnancy not her own. To Scarlett, scarcely wanting her coming

child and irritated at its untimeliness, this attitude seemed the

height of sentimental stupidity. But she had a guilty sense of

pleasure that the doctors' edict had made impossible any real

intimacy between Ashley and his wife.

Scarlett saw Ashley frequently now but she never saw him alone. He

came by the house every night on his way home from the mill to

report on the day's work, but Frank and Pitty were usually present

or, worse still, Melanie and India. She could only ask

businesslike questions and make suggestions and then say: "It was

nice of you to come by. Good night."

If only she wasn't having a baby! Here was a God-given opportunity

to ride out to the mill with him every morning, through the lonely

woods, far from prying eyes, where they could imagine themselves

back in the County again in the unhurried days before the war.

No, she wouldn't try to make him say one word of love! She

wouldn't refer to love in any way. She'd sworn an oath to herself

that she would never do that again. But, perhaps if she were alone

with him once more, he might drop that mask of impersonal courtesy

he had worn since coming to Atlanta. Perhaps he might be his old

self again, be the Ashley she had known before the barbecue, before

any word of love had been spoken between them. If they could not

be lovers, they could be friends again and she could warm her cold

and lonely heart in the glow of his friendship.

"If only I could get this baby over and done with," she thought

impatiently, "then I could ride with him every day and we could

talk--"

It was not only the desire to be with him that made her writhe with

helpless impatience at her confinement. The mills needed her. The

mills had been losing money ever since she retired from active

supervision, leaving Hugh and Ashley in charge.

Hugh was so incompetent, for all that he tried so hard. He was a

poor trader and a poorer boss of labor. Anyone could Jew him down

on prices. If any slick contractor chose to say that the lumber

was of an inferior grade and not worth the price asked, Hugh felt

that all a gentleman could do was to apologize and take a lower

price. When she heard of the price he received for a thousand feet

of flooring, she burst into angry tears. The best grade of

flooring the mill had ever turned out and he had practically given

it away! And he couldn't manage his labor crews. The negroes

insisted on being paid every day and they frequently got drunk on

their wages and did not turn up for work the next morning. On

these occasions Hugh was forced to hunt up new workmen and the mill

was late in starting. With these difficulties Hugh didn't get into

town to sell the lumber for days on end.

Seeing the profits slip from Hugh's fingers, Scarlett became

frenzied at her impotence and his stupidity. Just as soon as the

baby was born and she could go back to work, she would get rid of

Hugh and hire some one else. Anyone would do better. And she

would never fool with free niggers again. How could anyone get any

work done with free niggers quitting all the time?

"Frank," she said, after a stormy interview with Hugh over his

missing workmen, "I've about made up my mind that I'll lease

convicts to work the mills. A while back I was talking to Johnnie

Gallegher, Tommy Wellburn's foreman, about the trouble we were

having getting any work out of the darkies and he asked me why I

didn't get convicts. It sounds like a good idea to me. He said I

could sublease them for next to nothing and feed them dirt cheap.

And he said I could get work out of them in any way I liked,

without having the Freedman's Bureau swarming down on me like

hornets, sticking their bills into things that aren't any of their

business. And just as soon as Johnnie Gallegher's contract with

Tommy is up, I'm going to hire him to run Hugh's mill. Any man who

can get work out of that bunch of wild Irish he bosses can

certainly get plenty of work out of convicts."

Convicts! Frank was speechless. Leasing convicts was the very

worst of all the wild schemes Scarlett had ever suggested, worse

even than her notion of building a saloon.

At least, it seemed worse to Frank and the conservative circles in

which he moved. This new system of leasing convicts had come into

being because of the poverty of the state after the war. Unable to

support the convicts, the State was hiring them out to those

needing large labor crews in the building of railroads, in

turpentine forests and lumber camps. While Frank and his quiet

churchgoing friends realized the necessity of the system, they

deplored it just the same. Many of them had not even believed in

slavery and they thought this was far worse than slavery had ever

been.

And Scarlett wanted to lease convicts! Frank knew that if she did

he could never hold up his head again. This was far worse than

owning and operating the mills herself, or anything else she had

done. His past objections had always been coupled with the

question: "What will people say?" But this--this went deeper than

fear of public opinion. He felt that it was a traffic in human

bodies on a par with prostitution, a sin that would be on his soul