She did everything that any
woman could, she tended and soothed and helped her pale yellow mother,
and she worked hard in every way to take care of her, and make her
dying easy. But Melanctha did not in these days like her mother any
better, and her mother never cared much for this daughter who was
always a hard child to manage, and who had a tongue that always could
be very nasty.

Melanctha did everything that any woman could, and at last her mother
died, and Melanctha had her buried. Melanctha's father was not heard
from, and Melanctha in all her life after, never saw or heard or knew
of anything that her father did.

It was the young doctor, Jefferson Campbell, who helped Melanctha
toward the end, to take care of her sick mother. Jefferson Campbell
had often before seen Melanctha Herbert, but he had never liked her
very well, and he had never believed that she was any good. He had
heard something about how she wandered. He knew a little too of Jane
Harden, and he was sure that this Melanctha Herbert, who was her
friend and who wandered, would never come to any good.

Dr. Jefferson Campbell was a serious, earnest, good young joyous
doctor. He liked to take care of everybody and he loved his own
colored people. He always found life very easy did Jeff Campbell, and
everybody liked to have him with them. He was so good and sympathetic,
and he was so earnest and so joyous. He sang when he was happy, and he
laughed, and his was the free abandoned laughter that gives the warm
broad glow to negro sunshine.

Jeff Campbell had never yet in his life had real trouble. Jefferson's
father was a good, kind, serious, religious man. He was a very steady,
very intelligent, and very dignified, light brown, grey haired negro.
He was a butler and he had worked for the Campbell family many years,
and his father and his mother before him had been in the service of
this family as free people.

Jefferson Campbell's father and his mother had of course been
regularly married. Jefferson's mother was a sweet, little, pale brown,
gentle woman who reverenced and obeyed her good husband, and who
worshipped and admired and loved hard her-good, earnest, cheery, hard
working doctor boy who was her only child.

Jeff Campbell had been raised religious by his people but religion had
never interested Jeff very much. Jefferson was very good. He loved
his people and he never hurt them, and he always did everything they
wanted and that he could to