The front door opened and the counter boy entered, picking his teeth with a quill. Scarlett rose, pulled her shawl about her and tied her bonnet strings firmly under her chin. Her mind was made up.
"Are you busy this afternoon? Can you come with me now?" she asked.
"Where?"
"I want you to drive to the mill with me. I promised Frank I wouldn't drive out of town by myself."
"To the mill in this rain?"
"Yes, I want to buy that mill now, before you change your mind."
He laughed so loudly the boy behind the counter started and looked at him curiously.
"Have you forgotten you are married? Mrs. Kennedy can't afford to be seen driving out into the country with that Butler reprobate, who isn't received in the best parlors. Have you forgotten your reputation?"
"Reputation, fiddle-dee-dee! I want that mill before you change your mind or Frank finds out that I'm buying it. Don't be a slow poke, Rhett. What's a little rain? Let's hurry."
That sawmill! Frank groaned every time he thought of it, cursing himself for ever
mentioning it to her. It was bad enough for her to sell her earrings to Captain Butler （of all people!） and buy the mill without even consulting her own husband about it, but it was worse still that she did not turn it over to him to operate. That looked bad. As if she did not trust him or his judgment.
Frank, in common with all men he knew, felt that a wife should be guided by her
husband's superior knowledge, should accept his opinions in full and have none of her own. He would have given most women their own way. Women were such funny little creatures and it
never hurt to humor their small whims. Mild and gentle by nature, it was not in him to deny a wife much. He would have enjoyed gratifying the foolish notions of some soft little person and scolding her lovingly for her stupidity and extravagance. But the things Scarlett set her mind on were unthinkable.
That sawmill, for example. It was the shock of his life when she told him with a sweet
smile, in answer to his questions, that she intended to run it herself. "Go into the lumber business myself," was the way she put it. Frank would never forget the horror of that moment. Go into business for herself! It was unthinkable. There were no women in business in Atlanta. In fact, Frank had never heard of a woman in business anywhere. If women were so unfortunate as to be compelled to make a little money to assist their families in these hard times, they made it in quiet womanly ways--baking as Mrs. Merriwether was doing, or painting china and sewing and
keeping boarders, like Mrs. Elsing and Fanny, or teaching school like Mrs. Meade or giving music lessons like Mrs. Bonnell. These ladies made money but they kept themselves at home while they did it, as a woman should. But for a woman to leave the protection of her home and venture out into the rough world of men, competing with them in business, rubbing shoulders with them, being exposed to insult and gossip … Especially when she wasn't forced to do it, when she had a husband amply able to provide for her!
Frank had hoped she was only teasing or playing a joke on him, a joke of questionable
taste, but he soon found she meant what she said. She did operate the sawmill. She rose earlier than he did to drive out Peachtree road and frequently did not come home until long after he had locked up the store and returned to Aunt Pitty's for supper. She drove the long miles to the mill with only the disapproving Uncle Peter to protect her and the woods were full of free niggers and Yankee riffraff. Frank couldn't go with her, the store took all of his time, but when he protested, she said shortly: "If I don't keep an eye on that slick scamp, Johnson, he'll steal my lumber and sell it and put the money in his pocket. When I can get a good man to run the mill for me, then I won't have to go out there so often. Then I can spend my time in town selling lumber."
Selling lumber in town! That was worst of all. She frequently did take a day off from the mill and peddle lumber and, on those days, Frank wished he could hide in the dark back room of his store and see no one. His wife selling lumber!
And people were talking terrible about her. Probably about him too, for permitting her to behave in so unwomanly a fashion. It embarrassed him to face his customers over the counter and hear them say: "I saw Mrs. Kennedy a few minutes ago over at …" Everyone took pains to tell him what she did. Everyone was talking about what happened over where the new hotel was
being built. Scarlett had driven up just as Tommy Wellburn was buying some lumber from
another man and she climbed down out of the buggy among the rough Irish masons who were