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.
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