Dr. Campbell was helping Melanctha Herbert to take care of her sick mother.  He saw Melanctha now for long times and very often, and they sometimes talked a good deal together, but Melanctha never said anything to him about Jane Harden.  She never talked to him about anything that was not just general matters, or about medicine, or to tell him funny stories.  She asked him many questions and always listened very well to all he told her, and she always remembered everything she heard him say about doctoring, and she always remembered everything that she had learned from all the others.

Jeff Campbell never found that all this talk interested him very deeply.  He did not find that he liked Melanctha when he saw her so much, any better.  He never found that he thought much about Melanctha.  He never found that he believed much in her having a good mind, like Jane Harden.  He found he liked Jane Harden always better, and that he wished very much that she had never begun that bad drinking.

Melanctha Herbert’s mother was now always getting sicker.  Melanctha really did everything that any woman could.  Melanctha’s mother never liked her daughter any better.  She never said much, did ‘Mis’ Herbert, but anybody could see that she did not think much of this daughter.

Dr. Campbell now often had to stay a long time to take care of ‘Mis’ Herbert.  One day ‘Mis’ Herbert was much sicker and Dr. Campbell thought that this night, she would surely die.  He came back late to the house, as he had said he would, to sit up and watch ‘Mis’ Herbert, and to help Melanctha, if she should need anybody to be with her.  Melanctha Herbert and Jeff Campbell sat up all that night together.  ‘Mis’ Herbert did not die.  The next day she was a little better.

This house where Melanctha had always lived with her mother was a little red brick, two story house.  They had not much furniture to fill it and some of the windows were broken and not mended.  Melanctha did not have much money to use now on the house, but with a colored woman, who was their neighbor and good natured and who had always helped them, Melanctha managed to take care of her mother and to keep the house fairly clean and neat.

Melanctha’s mother was in bed in a room upstairs, and the steps from below led right up into it.  There were just two rooms on this upstairs floor.  Melanctha and Dr. Campbell sat down on the steps, that night they watched together, so that they could hear and see Melanctha’s mother and yet the light would be shaded, and they could sit and read, if they wanted to, and talk low some, and yet not disturb ‘Mis’ Herbert.