Scarlett could not help laughing at the pride and enthusiasm of father and daughter.
She thought, however, that once the novelty had passed, Bonnie would turn to other things and the neighborhood would have some peace.
But this sport did not pall.
There was a bare track worn from the arbor at the far end of the yard to the hurdle, and all morning long the yard resounded with excited yells.
Grandpa Merriwether, who had made the overland trip in 1849, said that the yells sounded just like an Apache after a successful scalping.
After the first week, Bonnie begged for a higher bar, a bar that was a foot and a half from the ground.
"When you are six years old," said Rhett. "Then you'll be big enough for a higher jump and I'll buy you a bigger horse.
Mr. Butler's legs aren't long enough."
"They are, too, I jumped Aunt Melly's rose bushes and they are 'normously high!"
"No, you must wait," said Rhett, firm for once.
But the firmness gradually faded away before her incessant importunings and tantrums.
"Oh, all right," he said with a laugh one morning and moved the narrow white cross bar higher.
"If you fall off, don't cry and blame me!"
"Mother!" screamed Bonnie, turning her head up toward Scarlett's bedroom.
"Mother!
Watch me!
Daddy says I can!"
Scarlett, who was combing her hair, came to the window and smiled down at the tiny excited figure, so absurd in the soiled blue habit.
"I really must get her another habit," she thought.
"Though Heaven only knows how I'll make her give up that dirty one."
"Mother, watch!"
"I'm watching dear," said Scarlett smiling.
As Rhett lifted the child and set her on the pony, Scarlett called with a swift rush of pride at the straight back and the proud set of the head,
"You're mighty pretty, precious!"
"So are you," said Bonnie generously and, hammering a heel into Mr. Butler's ribs, she galloped down the yard toward the arbor.
"Mother, watch me take this one!" she cried, laying on the crop.
WATCH ME TAKE THIS ONE!
Memory rang a bell far back in Scarlett's mind.
There was something ominous about those words.
What was it?
Why couldn't she remember?
She looked down at her small daughter, so lightly poised on the galloping pony and her brow wrinkled as a chill swept swiftly through her breast.
Bonnie came on with a rush, her crisp black curls jerking, her blue eyes blazing.
"They are like Pa's eyes," thought Scarlett, "Irish blue eyes and she's just like him in every way."
And, as she thought of Gerald, the memory for which she had been fumbling came to her swiftly, came with the heart stopping clarity of summer lightning, throwing, for an instant, a whole countryside into unnatural brightness.
She could hear an Irish voice singing, hear the hard rapid pounding of hooves coming up the pasture hill at Tara, hear a reckless voice, so like the voice of her child:
"Ellen!
Watch me take this one!"
"No!" she cried.
"No!
Oh, Bonnie, stop!"
Even as she leaned from the window there was a fearful sound of splintering wood, a hoarse cry from Rhett, a melee of blue velvet and flying hooves on the ground.
Then Mr. Butler scrambled to his feet and trotted off with an empty saddle.
On the third night after Bonnie's death, Mammy waddled slowly up the kitchen steps of Melanie's house.
She was dressed in black from her huge men's shoes, slashed to permit freedom for her toes, to her black head rag.
Her blurred old eyes were bloodshot and red rimmed, and misery cried out in every line of her mountainous figure.
Her face was puckered in the sad bewilderment of an old ape but there was determination in her jaw.
She spoke a few soft words to Dilcey who nodded kindly, as though an unspoken armistice existed in their old feud.
Dilcey put down the supper dishes she was holding and went quietly through the pantry toward the dining room.
In a minute Melanie was in the kitchen, her table napkin in her hand, anxiety in her face.