r and had only been a little eased by the reminder that when the priest came down to marry Will and Suellen, he could read the services over Gerald. It was she who objected to the neighboring Protestant preachers and gave the matter into Ashley’s hands, marking passages in her book for him to read. Ashley, leaning against the old secretary, knew that the responsibility for preventing trouble lay with him and, knowing the hair-trigger tempers of the County, was at a loss as to how to proceed.
“There’s no help for it, Will,” he said,
coach outlet store, rumpling his bright hair. “I can’t knock Grandma Fontaine down or old man McRae either, and I can’t hold my hand over Mrs. Tarleton’s mouth. And the mildest thing they’ll say is that Suellen is a murderess and a traitor and but for her Mr. O’Hara would still be alive. Damn this custom of speaking over the dead. It’s barbarous.”
“Look, Ash,
coach factory outlet,” said Will slowly. “I ain’t aimin’ to have nobody say nothin’ against Suellen, no matter what they think. You leave it to me. When you’ve finished with the readin’ and the prayin’ and you say: ‘If anyone would like to say a few words,’ you look right at me,
coach handbags, so I can speak first.”
But Scarlett, watching the pallbearers’ difficulty in getting the coffin through the narrow entrance into the burying ground, had no thought of trouble to come after the funeral. She was thinking with a leaden heart that in burying Gerald she was burying one of the last links that joined her to the old days of happiness and irresponsibility.
Finally the pallbearers set the coffin down near the grave and stood clenching and unclenching their aching fingers. Ashley, Melanie and Will filed into the enclosure and stood behind the O’Hara girls. All the closer neighbors who could crowd in were behind them and the others stood outside the brick wall. Scarlett, really seeing them for the first time, was surprised and touched by the size of the crowd. With transportation so limited it was kind of so many to come. There were fifty or sixty people there, some of them fr