Immediately asked for her hand did not improve matters. Mrs.

Merriwether felt that the South was heading for a complete moral

collapse and frequently said so. Other mothers concurred heartily

with her and blamed it on the war.

But men who expected to die within a week or a month could not

wait a year before they begged to call a girl by her first name,

with "Miss," of course, preceding it. Nor would they go through

the formal and protracted courtships which good manners had

prescribed before the war. They were likely to propose in three

or four months. And girls who knew very well that a lady always

refused a gentleman the first three times he proposed rushed

headlong to accept the first time.

This informality made the war a lot of fun for Scarlett. Except

for the messy business of nursing and the bore of bandage rolling,

she did not care if the war lasted forever. In fact, she could

endure the hospital with equanimity now because it was a perfect

happy hunting ground. The helpless wounded succumbed to her

charms without a struggle. Renew their bandages, wash their

faces, pat up their pillows and fan them, and they fell in love.

Oh, it was Heaven after the last dreary year!

Scarlett was back again where she had been before she married

Charles and it was as if she had never married him, never felt the

shock of his death, never borne Wade. War and marriage and

childbirth had passed over her without touching any deep chord

within her and she was unchanged. She had a child but he was

cared for so well by the others in the red brick house she could

almost forget him. In her mind and heart, she was Scarlett O'Hara

again, the belle of the County. Her thoughts and activities were

the same as they had been in the old days, but the field of her

activities had widened immensely. Careless of the disapproval of

Aunt Pitty's friends, she behaved as she had behaved before her

marriage, went to parties, danced, went riding with soldiers,

flirted, did everything she had done as a girl, except stop

wearing mourning. This she knew would be a straw that would break

the backs of Pittypat and Melanie. She was as charming a widow as

she had been a girl, pleasant when she had her own way, obliging

as long as it did not discommode her, vain of her looks and her

popularity.

She was happy now where a few weeks before she had been miserable,

happy with her beaux and their reassurances of her charm, as happy

as she could be with Ashley married to Melanie and in danger. But

somehow it was easier to bear the thought of Ashley belonging to

some one else when he was far away. With the hundreds of miles

stretching between Atlanta and Virginia, he sometimes seemed as

much hers as Melanie's.

So the autumn months of 1862 went swiftly by with nursing,

dancing, driving and bandage rolling taking up all the time she

did not spend on brief visits to Tara. These visits were

disappointing, for she had little opportunity for the long quiet

talks with her mother to which she looked forward while in

Atlanta, no time to sit by Ellen while she sewed, smelling the

faint fragrance of lemon verbena sachet as her skirts rustled,

feeling her soft hands on her cheek in a gentle caress.

Ellen was thin and preoccupied now and on her feet from morning

until long after the plantation was asleep. The demands of the

Confederate commissary were growing heavier by the month, and hers

was the task of making Tara produce. Even Gerald was busy, for

the first time in many years, for he could get no overseer to take

Jonas Wilkerson's place and he was riding his own acres. With

Ellen too busy for more than a goodnight kiss and Gerald in the

fields all day, Scarlett found Tara boring. Even her sisters were

taken up with their own concerns. Suellen had now come to an

"understanding" with Frank Kennedy and sang "When This Cruel War