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Gone with the Wind / Унесённые ветром. Уровень 3
Gone with the Wind / Унесённые ветром. Уровень 3
© ООО «Издательство АСТ», 2021
© Матвеев С.А., 2021
Chapter I
Scarlett O’Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it. In her face were the delicate features of her mother, a French aristocrat, and the heavy ones of her Irish father.
Seated with the Tarleton twins[1], Stuart and Brent, in the cool shade of the porch of Tara, her father’s plantation, that bright April afternoon of 1861, she made a pretty picture[2]. Her waist was the smallest in three counties, she was sixteen years old. Her manners were the result of her mother’s gentle admonitions and the stern discipline of her Mammy.
The twins laughed and talked. Nineteen years old, hard of muscle, with sunburned faces and deep auburn hair, their eyes merry and arrogant, they were alike. These boys were born to the ease of plantation life. The boys’ family had more money, more horses, more slaves than any one else in the County, but the boys had less grammar than most of their poor neighbors.
Stuart and Brent had just been expelled from the University of Georgia. Their older brothers, Tom and Boyd, had come home with them, because they refused to remain at an institution where the twins were not welcome.
«I know you two don’t care, and Tom too», Scarlett said. «But what about Boyd?»
«Oh, he can study law in Judge Parmalee’s office over in Fayetteville», answered Brent carelessly.
«Why?»
«The war! The war is going to start any day, and we won’t stay in college that time».
«You know there won’t be any war», said Scarlett. «It’s all just talk. The Yankees are too scared of us to fight».
She did not endure any conversation of which she was not the chief subject. War was men’s business, not ladies’.