She pointed out that you had one."
"It's not a carriage, it's an old buggy," said Scarlett indignantly.
"Well, no matter what.
I might as well tell you Suellen never has got over your marryin' Frank Kennedy and I don't know as I blame her.
You know that was a kind of scurvy trick to play on a sister."
Scarlett rose from his shoulder, furious as a rattler ready to strike.
"Scurvy trick, hey?
I'll thank you to keep a civil tongue in your head, Will Benteen!
Could I help it if he preferred me to her?"
"You're a smart girl, Scarlett, and I figger, yes, you could have helped him preferrin' you.
Girls always can.
But I guess you kind of coaxed him.
You're a mighty takin' person when you want to be, but all the same, he was Suellen's beau.
Why, she'd had a letter from him a week before you went to Atlanta and he was sweet as sugar about her and talked about how they'd get married when he got a little more money ahead.
I know because she showed me the letter."
Scarlett was silent because she knew he was telling the truth and she could think of nothing to say.
She had never expected Will, of all people, to sit in judgment on her.
Moreover the lie she had told Frank had never weighed heavily upon her conscience.
If a girl couldn't keep a beau, she deserved to lose him.
"Now, Will, don't be mean," she said.
"If Suellen had married him, do you think she'd ever have spent a penny on Tara or any of us?"
"I said you could be right takin' when you wanted to," said Will, turning to her with a quiet grin.
"No, I don't think we'd ever seen a penny of old Frank's money.
But still there's no gettin' 'round it, it was a scurvy trick and if you want to justify the end by the means, it's none of my business and who am I to complain?
But just the same Suellen has been like a hornet ever since.
I don't think she cared much about old Frank but it kind of teched her vanity and she's been sayin' as how you had good clothes and a carriage and lived in Atlanta while she was buried here at Tara.
She does love to go callin' and to parties, you know, and wear pretty clothes.
I ain't blamin' her.
Women are like that.
"Well, about a month ago I took her into Jonesboro and left her to go callin' while I tended to business and when I took her home, she was still as a mouse but I could see she was so excited she was ready to bust.
I thought she'd found out somebody was goin' to have a--that she'd heard some gossip that was interestin', and I didn't pay her much mind.
She went around home for about a week all swelled up and excited and didn't have much to say.
She went over to see Miss Cathleen Calvert--Scarlett, you'd cry your eyes out at Miss Cathleen.
Pore girl, she'd better be dead than married to that pusillanimous Yankee Hilton.
You knew he'd mortgaged the place and lost it and they're goin' to have to leave?"
"No, I didn't know and I don't want to know.
I want to know about Pa."
"Well, I'm gettin' to that," said Will patiently.
"When she come back from over there she said we'd all misjudged Hilton.
She called him Mr. Hilton and she said he was a smart man, but we just laughed at her.
Then she took to takin' your pa out to walk in the afternoons and lots of times when I was comin' home from the field I'd see her sittin' with him on the wall 'round the buryin' ground, talkin' at him hard and wavin' her hands.
And the old gentleman would just look at her sort of puzzled-like and shake his head.
You know how he's been, Scarlett.
He just got kind of vaguer and vaguer, like he didn't hardly know where he was or who we were.
One time, I seen her point to your ma's grave and the old gentleman begun to cry.
And when she come in the house all happy and excited lookin', I gave her a talkin' to, right sharp, too, and I said:
'Miss Suellen, why in hell are you devilin' your poor pa and bringin' up your ma to him?
Most of the time he don't realize she's dead and here you are rubbin' it in.'
And she just kind of tossed her head and laughed and said:
'Mind your business.