"You can laf all you want; but you ain't goin' through life lovin' nobody. You gotta girl somewhere; but do what you please so long as it don't come to that."
"Come to what?"
"Marrying a white woman."
"Wouldn't that be all right?"
She looked up at him with a glare. He smiled amusedly. "Don't you laf here on a subject like that! Lord! I think lots of you, but if I should hear that you had married a white woman, man, I'd steal money enough to come there and kill you dead!"
"Why would you want to do that?"
"Why would I want to do that? Humph! What you want to ask me such a question for? The idea!"
"But you haven't answered my question?"
She glared at him again, all the humor gone out of her face. Presently, biting at the thread in some sewing she was doing, she said: "In the first place, white people and Negroes have no business marrying each other. In the second place, a nigga' only gets a po' white woman. And in the third place, white people and nigga's don't mix well when it comes to society. Now, supposin' you married a white woman and brought her here to Chicago, who would you associate with? We nigga's 's sho goin' to pass 'er up. And the white folks—you better not look their way!"
He was silent.