Gone with the Wind / Унесённые ветром

Now, Puss, tell me true, do you understand his folderol[13 - пустые ра зговоры] about books and poetry and music and oil paintings and such foolishness?”

“Oh, Pa,” cried Scarlett impatiently, “if I married him, I’d change all that!”

“No wife has ever changed a husband, and don’t you be forgetting that. And as for changing a Wilkes, daughter! Look at the way they go to New York and Boston to hear operas and see oil paintings. And ordering French and German books from the Yankees! And there they sit reading and dreaming the dear God knows what, when they’d be better spending their time hunting and playing poker as proper men should.

“There’s nobody in the County who sits a horse better than Ashley. And as for poker, didn’t Ashley take two hundred dollars away from you just last week in Jonesboro?”

“Yes, he can do all those things, but his heart’s not in it. That’s why I say he’s queer.”

Scarlett was silent and her heart sank, for she knew Gerald was right.

Gerald patted her arm and said: “There now, Scarlett! You admit ’tis true. And when I’m gone – darlin’, listen to me! I’ll leave Tara to you —”

“I don’t want Tara or any old plantation. Plantations don’t mean anything when —”

She was going to say “when you haven’t the man you want,” but Gerald got furious.

“Do you stand there, Scarlett O’Hara, and tell me that Tara – that land – doesn’t mean anything?”

Scarlett nodded obstinately.

“Oh, Pa,” she said, “you talk like an Irishman!”

“Have I ever been ashamed of it? No, ’tis proud I am. And don’t be forgetting that you are half Irish, Miss! And to anyone with a drop of Irish blood in them the land they live on is like their mother. ’Tis ashamed of you I am this minute.

Gerald had begun to work himself up into a rage when something in Scarlett’s face stopped him.

“But there, you’re young. ’Twill come to you, this love of land, if you’re Irish. You’re just a child and bothered about your beaux. When you’re older, you’ll be seeing how ’tis…”

By this time, Gerald was tired of the conversation and annoyed that the problem should be upon his shoulders.

“Now, Miss.