“It looks like an altar,” she sniffed. “And the way they all carry on about those two, they might as well be the Father and the Son!” Then smitten with sudden fright at her irreverence she began hastily to cross herself by way of apology but caught herself in time.
　“Well, it’s true,” she argued with her conscience. “Everybody carries on like they were holy and they aren’t anything but men, and mighty unattractive looking ones at that .”
　Of course, Mr. Stephens couldn’t help how he looked for he had been an invalid all his life, but Mr. Davis— She looked up at the cameo clean, proud face. It was his goatee that annoyed her the most. Men should either be clean shaven, mustached or wear full beards.
　“That little wisp looks like it was just the best he could do,” she thought, not seeing in his face the cold hard intelligence that was carrying the weight of a new nation.
　No, she was not happy now, and at first she had been radiant with the pleasure of being in a crowd. Now just being present was not enough. She was at the bazaar but not a part of it. No one paid her any attention and she was the only young unmarried woman present who did not have a beau. And all her life she had enjoyed the center of the stage. It wasn’t fair! She was seventeen years old and her feet were patting the floor, wanting to skip and dance. She was seventeen years old and she had a husband lying at Oakland Cemetery and a baby in his cradle at Aunt Pittypat’s and everyone thought she should be content with her lot. She had a whiter bosom and a smaller waist and a tinier foot than any girl present, but for all they mattered she might just as well be lying beside Charles with “Beloved Wife of” carved over her .
　She wasn’t a girl who could dance and flirt and she wasn’t a wife who could sit with other wives and criticize the dancing and flirting girls. And she wasn’t old enough to be a widow. Widows should be old—so terribly old they didn’t want to dance and flirt and be admired. Oh, it wasn’t fair that she should have to sit here primly and be the acme of widowed dignity and propriety when she was only seventeen. It wasn’t fair that she must keep her voice low and her eyes cast modestly down, when men, attractive ones, too, came to their booth.
　Every girl in Atlanta was three deep in men. Even the plainest girls were carrying on like belles—and, oh, worst of all, they were carrying on in such lovely, lovely dresses!
　Here she sat like a crow with hot black taffeta to her wrists and buttoned up to her chin, with not even a hint of lace or braid, not a jewel except Ellen’s onyx mourning brooch, watching tacky-looking girls hanging on the arms of good-looking men. All because Charles Hamilton had had the measles. He didn’t even die in a fine glow of gallantry in battle, so she could brag about him.
　Rebelliously she leaned her elbows on the counter and looked at the crowd, flouting Mammy’s oft-repeated admonition against leaning on elbows and making them ugly and wrinkled. What did it matter if they did get ugly? She’d probably never get a chance to show them again. She looked hungrily at the frocks floating by, butter-yellow watered silks with garlands of rosebuds; pink satins with eighteen flounces edged with tiny black velvet ribbons; baby blue taffeta, ten yards in the skirt and foamy with cascading lace; exposed bosoms; seductive flowers. Maybelle Merriwether went toward the next booth on the arm of the Zouave, in an apple-green tarlatan so wide that it reduced her waist to nothingness. It Was showered and flounced with cream-colored Chantilly lace that had come from Charleston on the last blockader, and Maybelle was flaunting it as saucily as if she and not the famous Captain Butler had run the blockade.