live regular and work hard and understand
things, and that's enough to keep any decent man excited." Jeff
Campbell spoke now with some anger. Not to Melanctha, he did not think
of her at all when he was talking. It was the life he wanted that he
spoke to, and the way he wanted things to be with the colored people.

But Melanctha Herbert had listened to him say all this. She knew he
meant it, but it did not mean much to her, and she was sure some day
he would find out, that it was not all, of real wisdom. Melanctha
knew very well what it was to have real wisdom. "But how about Jane
Harden?" said Melanctha to Jeff Campbell, "seems to me Dr. Campbell
you find her to have something in her, and you go there very often,
and you talk to her much more than you do to the nice girls that stay
at home with their people, the kind you say you are really wanting. It
don't seem to me Dr. Campbell, that what you say and what you do seem
to have much to do with each other. And about your being so good Dr.
Campbell," went on Melanctha, "You don't care about going to church
much yourself, and yet you always are saying you believe so much in
things like that, for people. It seems to me, Dr. Campbell you want
to have a good time just like all us others, and then you just keep
on saying that it's right to be good and you ought not to have
excitements, and yet you really don't want to do it Dr. Campbell, no
more than me or Jane Harden. No, Dr. Campbell, it certainly does seem
to me you don't know very well yourself, what you mean, when you are
talking."

Jefferson had been talking right along, the way he always did when he
got started, and now Melanctha's answer only made him talk a little
harder. He laughed a little, too, but very low, so as not to disturb
'Mis' Herbert who was sleeping very nicely, and he looked brightly at
Melanctha to enjoy her, and then he settled himself down to answer.

"Yes," he began, "it certainly does sound a little like I didn't
know very well what I do mean, when you put it like that to me, Miss
Melanctha, but that's just because you don't understand enough about
what I meant, by what I was just saying to you. I don't say, never,
I don't want to know all kinds of people, Miss Melanctha, and I don't
say there ain't many kinds of people, and I don't say ever, that I
don't find some like Jane Harden very good to know and talk to, but
it's the strong things I like in Jane Harden, not all her excitements.
I don't a