Conceited old fool, she thought.
"Oh, you could be a success at anything you turned your hand to, Mr. Kennedy. But how on earth did you ever get started with the store? When I saw you Christmas before last you said you didn't have a cent in the world."
He cleared his throat raspingly, clawed at his whiskers and smiled his nervous timid
smile.
"Well, it's a long story, Miss Scarlett."
Thank the Lord! she thought. Perhaps it will hold him till we get home. And aloud: "Do tell!"
"You recall when we came to Tara last, hunting for supplies? Well, not long after that I went into active service. I mean real fighting. No more commissary for me. There wasn't much need for a commissary, Miss Scarlett, because we couldn't hardly pick up a thing for the army, and I thought the place for an able-bodied man was in the fighting line. Well, I fought along with the cavalry for a spell till I got a minie ball through the shoulder."
He looked very proud and Scarlett said: "How dreadful!"
"Oh, it wasn't so bad, just a flesh wound," he said deprecatingly. "I was sent down south to a hospital and when I was just about well, the Yankee raiders came through. My, my, but that was a hot time! We didn't have much warning and all of us who could walk helped haul out the army stores and the hospital equipment to the train tracks to move it. We'd gotten one train about loaded when the Yankees rode in one end of town and out we went the other end as fast as we could go. My, my, that was a mighty sad sight, sitting on top of that train and seeing the Yankees
burn those supplies we had to leave at the depot. Miss Scarlett, they burned about a half-mile of stuff we had piled up there along the tracks. We just did get away ourselves."
"How dreadful!"
"Yes, that's the word. Dreadful. Our men had come back into Atlanta then and so our train was sent here. Well, Miss Scarlett, it wasn't long before the war was over and--well, there was a lot of china and cots and mattresses and blankets and nobody claiming them. I suppose rightfully they belonged to the Yankees. I think those were the terms of the surrender, weren't they?"
"Um," said Scarlett absently. She was getting warmer now and a little drowsy.
"I don't know till now if I did right," he said, a little querulously. "But the way I figured it, all that stuff wouldn't do the Yankees a bit of good. They'd probably burn it. And our folks had paid good solid money for it, and I thought it still ought to belong to the Confederacy or to the Confederates. Do you see what I mean?"
"Um."
"I'm glad you agree with me, Miss Scarlett. In a way, it's been on my conscience. Lots of folks have told me: 'Oh, forget about it, Frank,' but I can't I couldn't hold up my head if I thought I'd done what wasn't right. Do you think I did right?"
"Of course," she said, wondering what the old fool had been talking about. Some struggle with his conscience. When a man got as old as Frank Kennedy he ought to have learned not to bother about things that didn't matter. But he always was so nervous and fussy and old maidish.
"I'm glad to hear you say it. After the surrender I had about ten dollars in silver and nothing else in the world. You know what they did to Jonesboro and my house and store there. I just didn't know what to do. But I used the ten dollars to put a roof on an old store down by Five Points and I moved the hospital equipment in and started selling it. Everybody needed beds and china and mattresses and I sold them cheap, because I figured it was about as much other folks'
stuff as it was mine. But I cleared money on it and bought some more stuff and the store just went along fine. I think I'll make a lot of money on it if things pick up."
At the word "money," her mind came back to him, crystal clear.
"You say you've made money?"
He visibly expanded under her interest. Few women except Suellen had ever given him
more than perfunctory courtesy and it was very flattering to have a former belle like Scarlett hanging on his words. He slowed the horse so they would not reach home before he had finished his story.
"I'm not a millionaire, Miss Scarlett, and considering the money I used to have, what I've got now sounds small. But I made a thousand dollars this year. Of course, five hundred of it went to paying for new stock and repairing the store and paying the rent. But I've made five hundred clear and as things are certainly picking up, I ought to clear two thousand next year. I can sure use it, too, for you see, I've got another iron in the fire."
Interest had sprung up sharply in her at the talk of money. She veiled her eyes with thick bristly lashes and moved a little closer to him.