After she had lived some time this way, Rose thought it would be nice and very good in her position to get regularly really married.  She had lately met Sam Johnson somewhere, and she liked him and she knew he was a good man, and then he had a place where he worked every day and got good wages.  Sam Johnson liked Rose very well and he was quite ready to be married.  One day they had a grand real wedding and were married.  Then with Melanctha Herbert’s help to do the sewing and the nicer work, they furnished comfortably a little red brick house.  Sam then went back to his work as deck hand on a coasting steamer, and Rose stayed home in her house and sat and bragged to all her friends how nice it was to be married really to a husband.

Life went on very smoothly with them all the year.  Rose was lazy but not dirty and Sam was careful but not fussy, and then there was Melanctha to come in every day and help to keep things neat.

When Rose’s baby was coming to be born, Rose came to stay in the house where Melanctha Herbert lived just then, with a big good natured colored woman who did washing.

Rose went there to stay, so that she might have the doctor from the hospital near by to help her have the baby, and then, too, Melanctha could attend to her while she was sick.

Here the baby was born, and here it died, and then Rose went back to her house again with Sam.

Melanctha Herbert had not made her life all simple like Rose Johnson.  Melanctha had not found it easy with herself to make her wants and what she had, agree.

Melanctha Herbert was always losing what she had in wanting all the things she saw.  Melanctha was always being left when she was not leaving others.

Melanctha Herbert always loved too hard and much too often.  She was always full with mystery and subtle movements and denials and vague distrusts and complicated disillusions.  Then Melanctha would be sudden and impulsive and unbounded in some faith, and then she would suffer and be strong in her repression.

Melanctha Herbert was always seeking rest and quiet, and always she could only find new ways to be in trouble.

Melanctha wondered often how it was she did not kill herself when she was so blue.  Often she thought this would be really the best way for her to do.

Melanctha Herbert had been raised to be religious, by her mother.  Melanctha had not liked her mother very well.  This mother, ‘Mis’ Herbert, as her neighbors called her, had been a sweet appearing and dignified and pleasant, pale yellow, colored woman.  ‘Mis’ Herbert had always been a little wandering and mysterious and uncertain in her ways.

Melanctha was pale yellow and mysterious and a little pleasant like her mother, but the real power in Melanctha’s nature came through her robust and unpleasant and very unendurable black father.

Melanctha’s father only used to come to where Melanctha and her mother lived, once in a while.