She sighed. If even one of the mills were making money, she could stand it. But Ashley
was faring little better with his mill than Hugh.
At first Scarlett was shocked and disappointed that Ashley did not immediately take hold
and make the mill pay double what it had paid under her management. He was so smart and he had read so many books and there was no reason at all why he should not make a brilliant success and lots of money. But he was no more successful than Hugh. His inexperience, his errors, his utter lack of business judgment and his scruples about close dealing were the same as Hugh's.
Scarlett's love hastily found excuses for him and she did not consider the two men in the same light. Hugh was just hopelessly stupid, while Ashley was merely new at the business. Still, unbidden, came the thought that Ashley could never make a quick estimate in his head and give a price that was correct, as she could. And she sometimes wondered if he'd ever learn to distinguish between planking and sills. And because he was a gentleman and himself trustworthy, he trusted every scoundrel who came along and several times would have lost money for her if she had not tactfully intervened. And if he liked a person--and he seemed to like so many people!--he sold them lumber on credit without ever thinking to find out if they had money in the bank or
property. He was as bad as Frank in that respect.
But surely he would learn! And while he was learning she had a fond and maternal
indulgence and patience for his errors. Every evening when he called at her house, weary and discouraged, she was tireless in her tactful, helpful suggestions. But for all her encouragement and cheer, there was a queer dead look in his eyes. She could not understand it and it frightened her. He was different, so different from the man he used to be. If only she could see him alone, perhaps she could discover the reason.
The situation gave her many sleepless nights. She worried about Ashley, both because she
knew he was unhappy and because she knew his unhappiness wasn't helping him to become a
good lumber dealer. It was a torture to have her mills in the hands of two men with no more business sense than Hugh and Ashley, heartbreaking to see her competitors taking her best customers away when she had worked so hard and planned so carefully for these helpless
months. Oh, if she could only get back to work again! She would take Ashley in hand and then he would certainly learn. And Johnnie Gallegher could run the other mill, and she could handle the
selling, and then everything would be fine. As for Hugh, he could drive a delivery wagon if he still wanted to work for her. That was all he was good for.
Of course, Gallegher looked like an unscrupulous man, for all of his smartness, but--who
else could she get? Why had the other men who were both smart and honest been so perverse about working for her? If she only had one of them working for her now in place of Hugh, she wouldn't have to worry so much, but--
Tommy Wellburn, in spite of his crippled back, was the busiest contractor in town and
coining money, so people said. Mrs. Merriwether and René were prospering and now had opened a bakery downtown. René was managing it with true French thrift and Grandpa Merriwether,
glad to escape from his chimney corner, was driving René's pie wagon. The Simmons boys were so busy they were operating their brick kiln with three shifts of labor a day. And Kells Whiting was cleaning up money with his hair straightener, because he told the negroes they wouldn't ever be permitted to vote the Republican ticket if they had kinky hair.
It was the same with all the smart young men she knew, the doctors, the lawyers, the
storekeepers. The apathy which had clutched them immediately after the war had completely disappeared and they were too busy building their own fortunes to help her build hers. The ones who were not busy were the men of Hugh's type--or Ashley's.
What a mess it was to try to run a business and have a baby too!
"I'll never have another one," she decided firmly. "I'm not going to be like other women and have a baby every year. Good Lord, that would mean six months out of the year when I'd have to be away from the mills! And I see now I can't afford to be away from them even one day.
I shall simply tell Frank that I won't have any more children."
Frank wanted a big family, but she could manage Frank somehow. Her mind was made
up. This was her last child. The mills were far more important.
CHAPTER XLII
SCARLETT'S CHILD was a girl, a small baldheaded mite, ugly as a hairless monkey and
absurdly like Frank. No one except the doting father could see anything beautiful about her, but the neighbors were charitable enough to say that all ugly babies turned out pretty, eventually. She was named Ella Lorena, Ella for her grandmother Ellen, and Lorena because it was the most fashionable name of the day for girls, even as Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson were popular for boys and Abraham Lincoln and Emancipation for negro children.