“Well, at any rate I’ve never been thrown,” cried Scarlett indignantly. “And Mrs. Tarleton takesa toss at every hunt.”
“And breaks a collar bone like a man,” said Gerald. “No fainting, no fussing. Now, no more ofit, for here she comes.”
He stood up in his stirrups and took off his hat with sweep, as the Tarleton carriage, overflowing with girls in bright dresses and parasols and flutteri(a) ng veils, came into view, with Mrs.
Tarleton on the box as Gerald had said. With her four daughters, their mammy and 　a police shieldcould hold me upside down and drainmy gutschange your mindtheir balldresses in long cardboard boxes crowding the carriage, . And,besides, Beatrice Tarleton never willingly permitted anyone, black or white, to hold reins when herarms were out of slings. Frail, fine-boned, so white of skin that her flaming hair seemed to havedrawn all the color from her face into its vital burnished mass, she was nevertheless possessed ofexuberant health and untiring energy. She had borne eight children, as red of hair and as full of lifeas she, and had raised them most successfully, so the County said, because she gave them all theloving neglect and the stem discipline she gave the colts she bred. “Curb them but don’t break theirspirits,” was Mrs. Tarleton’s motto.
She loved horses and talked horses constantly. She understood them and handled them betterthan any man in the County. Colts overflowed the paddock onto the front lawn, even as her eightchildren overflowed the rambling house on the hill, and colts and sons and daughters and huntingdogs tagged after her as she went about the plantation. She credited her horses, especially her redmare, Nellie, with human intelligence; and if the cares of the house kept her busy beyond the timewhen she expected to take her daily ride, she put the sugar bowl in the hands of some smallpickaninny and said: “Give Nellie a handful and tell her I’ll be out terrectly.”
Except on rare occasions she always wore her riding habit, for whether she rode or not shealways expected to ride and in that expectation put on her habit upon arising. Each morning, rainor shine, Nellie was saddled and walked up and down in front of the house, waiting for the timewhen Mrs. Tarleton could spare hour away from her duties. But Fairhill was a difficult plantationtomanageandsparetime(an) hard to get, and more often than not Nellie walked up anddown riderless hour after hour, while Beatrice Tarleton went through the day with the skirt of herhabit absently looped over her arm and six inches of shining boot showing below it.
Today, dressed in dull black silk over unfashionably narrow hoops, she still looked as though inher habit, for the dress was as severely tailored as her riding costume and the small black hat withHa long black plume perched over one warm,