Gone with the Wind / Унесённые ветром. Уровень 3

The Yankee blockade about the Confederate ports tightened, and luxuries such as tea, coffee, silks, whalebone stays, fashion magazines and books were scarce and dear. The hospitals were worrying about the scarcity of quinine, calomel, opium, chloroform and iodine. Linen and cotton bandages were precious, and ladies who nursed at the hospitals brought home baskets of bloody strips, They washed and ironed and returned them.

But Scarlett was happy to be in the world again. She did not care if the war lasted forever.

The helpless wounded succumbed to her charms without a struggle. They fell in love easily.

Scarlett was happy. War and marriage and childbirth had passed over her and she was unchanged. She had a child but she almost forgot him. She went to parties, danced, went riding with soldiers, flirted. Sometimes Scarlett went to Tara. These visits were disappointing.

Though Scarlett always went home to Tara with a happy heart, she was never sorry to return. Rhett Butler called frequently at Aunt Pittypat’s house.

Rhett called whenever he was in town, escorting her to danceables and bazaars and waiting outside the hospital to drive her home. But he annoyed her frequently.

He was in his mid-thirties, older than any beau she had ever had, and she was as helpless as a child to control and handle him. He returned to Atlanta, and presented Scarlett, with overdone gallantry, a box of bonbons. Or claimed her at a dance, and she was usually amused.

Scarlett felt that he had no respect for any woman, unless perhaps for Melanie.

«I don’t see why you’re so much nicer to her than to me», said Scarlett petulantly. «I’m much prettier than she is».

«If I am �nicer’ to Mrs. Wilkes, it is because she deserves it. She is sincere unselfish».

One day Melanie said,

«Ashley writes me that we should not fight the Yankees. And that we are betrayed into it by statesmen and orators. He says nothing this war was just misery and dirt. He meant exactly what Captain Butler meant, only he didn’t say it in a rude way.

And I don’t know what to think».

Scarlett knew that Rhett was not patriotic and she did not care. The little presents he brought her from Nassau were what mattered most to her.

One bright summer morning he appeared with a brightly trimmed hatbox in his hand and, when Scarlett was alone in the house, he opened it. There was a very nice bonnet in it!

В«Put it onВ», said Rhett, smiling.