Once she slipped and fell from a high place. A workman
caught her and so she was not killed, but her left arm was badly
broken.
All the men crowded around her. They admired her boldness in doing and
in bearing pain when her arm was broken. They all went along with
her with great respect to the doctor, and then they took her home in
triumph and all of them were bragging about her not squealing.
James Herbert was home where his wife lived, that day. He was furious
when he saw the workmen and Melanctha. He drove the men away with
curses so that they were all very nearly fighting, and he would not
let a doctor come in to attend Melanctha. "Why don't you see to that
girl better, you, you're her mother."
James Herbert did not fight things out now any more with his daughter.
He feared her tongue, and her school learning, and the way she had
of saying things that were very nasty to a brutal black man who
knew nothing. And Melanctha just then hated him very badly in her
suffering.
And so this was the way Melanctha lived the four years of her
beginning as a woman. And many things happened to Melanctha, but she
knew very well that none of them had led her on to the right way, that
certain way that was to lead her to world wisdom.
Melanctha Herbert was sixteen when she first met Jane Harden. Jane was
a negress, but she was so white that hardly any one could guess it.
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