rl and these people had no
children of their own and so they kept Rose in their house.

As Rose grew older she drifted from her white folks back to the
colored people, and she gradually no longer lived in the old house.
Then it happened that these people went away to some other town to
live, and somehow Rose stayed behind in Bridgepoint. Her white folks
left a little money to take care of Rose, and this money she got every
little while.

Rose now in the easy fashion of the poor lived with one woman in her
house, and then for no reason went and lived with some other woman
in her house. All this time, too, Rose kept company, and was engaged,
first to this colored man and then to that, and always she made sure
she was engaged, for Rose had strong the sense of proper conduct.

"No, I ain't no common nigger just to go around with any man, nor you
Melanctha shouldn't neither," she said one day when she was telling
the complex and less sure Melanctha what was the right way for her to
do. "No Melanctha, I ain't no common nigger to do so, for I was raised
by white folks. You know very well Melanctha that I'se always been
engaged to them."

And so Rose lived on, always comfortable and rather decent and very
lazy and very well content.

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