Gone with the Wind: Chapters 4–7

Ellen ate diligently, but Scarlett could see that she was too tired to know what she was eating. Only Mammy's implacable face forced her to it.

A balmy, soft warmth poured into the room, heavy with velvety smells, redolent of many blossoms, of newly fledged trees and of the moist, freshly turned red earth.

The mockingbirds and the jays, engaged in their old feud for possession of the magnolia tree beneath her window, were bickering, the jays strident, acrimonious, the mockers sweet voiced and plaintive.

The mockingbirds and the jays, engaged in their old feud for possession of the magnolia tree beneath her window, were bickering, the jays strident, acrimonious, the mockers sweet voiced and plaintive.

The mockingbirds and the jays, engaged in their old feud for possession of the magnolia tree beneath her window, were bickering, the jays strident, acrimonious, the mockers sweet voiced and plaintive.

Seeing the obdurate look on Scarlett's face, Mammy picked up the tray...

"Try a hot cake," said Mammy inexorably.

Occasionally he burst out with "Peg in a Low-backed Car" and other Irish ditties or the more lugubrious lament for Robert Emmet, "She is far from the land where her young hero sleeps."

She had never given him more than perfunctory courtesy before, and so the beaming smile of pleasure with which she greeted him and the two hands outstretched to his almost took his breath away.

Even with Honey, with whom he had an unspoken understanding of marriage when he came into his property next fall, he was diffident and silent.

For all that she had a superfluity of beaux, she had never been more miserable in her life.

Secession, war—these words long since had become acutely boring to Scarlett from much repetition, but now she hated the sound of them, for they meant that the men would stand there for hours haranguing one another and she would have no chance to corner Ashley.

Oh, far better that she had followed Ellen and Mammy's precepts and never, never revealed that she even liked him — better anything than to be faced with this scorching shame!

The conduct of a widow must be twice as circumspect as that of a matron.

Everyone talked about how sweet it was that she had this posthumous token of her love and she naturally did not disabuse their minds. But that thought was farthest from her mind.