Melanctha, the
best kind of a way a colored girl can have to be acting, no I never
do say to you Melanctha, you hadn't never ought to be with white men,
though it ain't never the way I feel it ever real, right for a decent
colored girl to be always doing, but not never Melanctha, now you hear
me, no not never no kind of white men like you been with always now
Melanctha when I see you. You just hear to me Melanctha, you certainly
had ought to hear to me Melanctha, I say it just like I knows it awful
well, Melanctha, and I knows you don't know no better, Melanctha, how
to act so, the ways I seen it with them kind of white fellers, them as
never can know what to do right by a decent girl they have ever got to
be with them. Now you hear to me Melanctha, what I tell you."

And so it was Melanctha Herbert found new ways to be in trouble.
But it was not very bad this trouble, for these white men Rose never
wanted she should be with, never meant very much to Melanctha. It was
only that she liked it to be with them, and they knew all about fine
horses, and it was just good to Melanctha, now a little, to feel real
reckless with them. But mostly it was Rose and other better kind of
colored girls and colored men with whom Melanctha Herbert now always
wandered.

It was summer now and the colored people came out into the sunshine,
full blown with the flowers. And they shone in the streets and in the
fields with their warm joy, and they glistened in their black heat,
and they flung themselves free in their wide abandonment of shouting
laughter.

It was very pleasant in some ways, the life Melanctha Herbert now led
with Rose and all the others. It was not always that Rose had to scold
her.

There was not anybody of all these colored people, excepting only
Rose, who ever meant much to Melanctha Herbert. But they all liked
Melanctha, and the men all liked to see her do things, she was so game
always to do anything anybody ever could do, and then she was good and
sweet to do anything anybody ever wanted from her.

These were pleasant days then, in the hot southern negro sunshine,
with many simple jokes and always wide abandonment of laughter. "Just
look at that Melanctha there a running. Don't she just go like a bird
when she is flying. Hey Melanctha there, I come and catch you, hey
Melanctha, I put salt on your tail to catch you," and then the man
would try to catch her, and he would fall full on the earth and roll
in an agony of