2012年3月15日星期四

a very good job on any of the three of us

“Well, it wouldn’t be right to make Jeems face what we don’t want to face. We’ll have to take him. But, look, you impudent black fool, if you put on any airs in front of the Wynder darkies and hint that we all the time have fried chicken and ham, while they don’t have nothing but rabbit and possum, I’ll—I’ll tell Ma. And we won’t let you go to the war with us, either.”  “Airs? Me put on airs fo’ dem cheap niggers? Nawsuh, Ah got better manners. Ain’ Miss Beetriss taught me manners same as she taught y’all?”  “She didn’t do a very good job on any of the three of us,” said Stuart. “Come on, let’s get going.”  He backed his big red horse and then, putting spurs to his side, lifted him easily over the split rail fence into the soft field of Gerald O’Hara’s plantation. Brent’s horse followed and then Jeems’, with Jeems clinging to pommel and mane. Jeems did not like to jump fences, but he had jumped higher ones than this in order to keep up with his masters.  As they picked their way across the red furrows and down the hill to the river bottom in the deepening dusk, Brent yelled to his brother:  “Look, Stu! Don’t it seem like to you that Scarlett would have asked us to supper?”  “I kept thinking she would,” yelled Stuart “Why do you suppose ...”    CHAPTER II  WHEN THE TWINS left Scarlett standing on the porch of Tara and the last sound of flying hooves had died away, she went back to her chair like a sleepwalker. Her face felt stiff as from pain and her mouth actually hurt from having stretched it, unwillingly, in smiles to prevent the twins from learning her secret. She sat down wearily, tucking one foot under her, and her heart swelled up with misery, until it felt too large for her bosom. It beat with odd little jerks; her hands were cold, and a feeling of disaster oppressed her. There were pain and bewilderment in her face, the bewilderment of a pampered child who has always had her own way for the asking and who now, for the first time, was in contact with the unpleasantness of life.  Ashley to marry Melanie Hamilton!

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