Scarlett had given no thought to this, so intent was she upon the money the mill would bring in.
"Well, I just won't tell him."
"He'll know you didn't pick it off a bush."
"I'll tell him--why, yes, I'll tell him I sold you my diamond earbobs.
And I will give them to you, too.
That'll be my collat-- my whatchucallit."
"I wouldn't take your earbobs."
"I don't want them.
I don't like them.
They aren't really mine, anyway."
"Whose are they?"
Her mind went swiftly back to the still hot noon with the country hush deep about Tara and the dead man in blue sprawled in the hall.
"They were left with me--by someone who's dead.
They're mine all right.
Take them.
I don't want them.
I'd rather have the money for them."
"Good Lord!" he cried impatiently.
"Don't you ever think of anything but money?"
"No," she replied frankly, turning hard green eyes upon him.
"And if you'd been through what I have, you wouldn't either.
I've found out that money is the most important thing in the world and, as God is my witness, I don't ever intend to be without it again."
She remembered the hot sun, the soft red earth under her sick head, the niggery smell of the cabin behind the ruins of Twelve Oaks, remembered the refrain her heart had beaten:
"I'll never be hungry again.
I'll never be hungry again."
"I'm going to have money some day, lots of it, so I can have anything I want to eat.
And then there'll never be any hominy or dried peas on my table.
And I'm going to have pretty clothes and all of them are going to be silk--"
"All?"
"All," she said shortly, not even troubling to blush at his implication.
"I'm going to have money enough so the Yankees can never take Tara away from me.
And I'm going to have a new roof for Tara and a new barn and fine mules for plowing and more cotton than you ever saw.
And Wade isn't ever going to know what it means to do without the things he needs.
Never!
He's going to have everything in the world.
And all my family, they aren't ever going to be hungry again.
I mean it.
Every word.
You don't understand, you're such a selfish hound.
You've never had the Carpetbaggers trying to drive you out.
You've never been cold and ragged and had to break your back to keep from starving!"
He said quietly:
"I was in the Confederate Army for eight months.
I don't know any better place for starving."
"The army!
Bah!
You've never had to pick cotton and weed corn.
You've-- Don't you laugh at me!"
His hands were on hers again as her voice rose harshly.
"I wasn't laughing at you.