I just wanted to see them go by. I wish I was going."

"Honey!"

"Well, I do. I'm so tired of sitting at home."

"Scarlett, promise me you won't say things like that. People

would talk so. They'd say you didn't have the proper respect for

poor Charlie--"

"Oh, Auntie, don't cry!"

"Oh, now I've made you cry, too," sobbed Pittypat, in a pleased

way, fumbling in her skirt pocket for her handkerchief.

The hard little pain had at last reached Scarlett's throat and she

wailed out loud--not, as Pittypat thought, for poor Charlie but

because the last sounds of the wheels and the laughter were dying

away. Melanie rustled in from her room, a worried frown puckering

her forehead, a brush in her hands, her usually tidy black hair,

freed of its net, fluffing about her face in a mass of tiny curls

and waves.

"Darlings! What is the matter?"

"Charlie!" sobbed Pittypat, surrendering utterly to the pleasure

of her grief and burying her head on Melly's shoulder.

"Oh," said Melly, her lip quivering at the mention of her

brother's name. "Be brave, dear. Don't cry. Oh, Scarlett!"

Scarlett had thrown herself on the bed and was sobbing at the top

of her voice, sobbing for her lost youth and the pleasures of

youth that were denied her, sobbing with the indignation and

despair of a child who once could get anything she wanted by

sobbing and now knows that sobbing can no longer help her. She

burrowed her head in the pillow and cried and kicked her feet at

the tufted counterpane.

"I might as well be dead!" she sobbed passionately. Before such

an exhibition of grief, Pittypat's easy tears ceased and Melly

flew to the bedside to comfort her sister-in-law.

"Dear, don't cry! Try to think how much Charlie loved you and let

that comfort you! Try to think of your darling baby."

Indignation at being misunderstood mingled with Scarlett's forlorn

feeling of being out of everything and strangled all utterance.

That was fortunate, for if she could have spoken she would have

cried out truths couched in Gerald's forthright words. Melanie

patted her shoulder and Pittypat tiptoed heavily about the room

pulling down the shades.

"Don't do that!" shouted Scarlett, raising a red and swollen face

from the pillow. "I'm not dead enough for you to pull down the

shades--though I might as well be. Oh, do go away and leave me

alone!"

She sank her face into the pillow again and, after a whispered

conference, the two standing over her tiptoed out. She heard

Melanie say to Pittypat in a low voice as they went down the

stairs:

"Aunt Pitty, I wish you wouldn't speak of Charles to her. You

know how it always affects her. Poor thing, she gets that queer

look and I know she's trying not to cry. We mustn't make it

harder for her."

Scarlett kicked the coverlet in impotent rage, trying to think of

something bad enough to say.

"God's nightgown!" she cried at last, and felt somewhat relieved.

How could Melanie be content to stay at home and never have any

fun and wear crepe for her brother when she was only eighteen

years old? Melanie did not seem to know, or care, that life was

riding by with jingling spurs.

"But she's such a stick," thought Scarlett, pounding the pillow.

"And she never was popular like me, so she doesn't miss the things