“You don’t think Ah’m tryin’ tuh git outa takin’ keer uh yuh, do yuh, Janie, ‘cause Ah ast yuh tuh work long side uh me?” Tea Cake asked her at the end of her first week in the field.
    “Ah naw, honey.  Ah laks it.  It’s mo’ nicer than settin’ round dese quarters all day.  Clerkin’ in dat stre wuz hard, but heah, we ain’t got nothin’ tuh do but do our work and come home and love.”
    The house was full of people every night.  That is all around the doorstep was full.  Some were there to hear Tea Cake pick the box; some came to talk and tell stories, but most of them came to get into whatever game was going on or might go on.  Sometimes Tea Cake lost heavily, for there were several good gamblers on the lake.  Sometimes he won and made Janie proud of his skill.  But outside of the two jooks, everything on that job went on around those two. 
   Sometimes Janie would think of the old days in the big white house and the store and laugh to herself.  What if Eatonville could see her now in her blue denim overalls and heavy shoes?  The crowd of people around her and a dice game on her floor!  She was sorry for her friends back there and scornful of the others.  The men held big arguments here like they used to do on the store porch.  Only here, she could listen and laugh and even talk some herself if she wanted to. She got so she could tell big stories herself from listening to the rest.  Because she loved to hear it, and the men loved to hear themselves, they would “woof” and “booger-boo” around the games to the limit.  No matter how rough it was, people seldom got mad, because everything was done for a laugh. 
 
 

Note

“You don’t think Ah’m tryin’ tuh git outa takin’ keer uh yuh, do yuh, Janie,"
Here, Tea Cake is showing his concern for Janie's feelings.  Unlike her past marriages, Janie is actually being asked what she is feeling. Tea Cake has this tenderness about him throughout this chapter.  First, he believes that he is away from Janie too long while he is at work so he asks her to go to the fields with him.  Secondly, he begins to show her things she would have never been shown if still married to Joe Starks, for example, shooting a gun.  
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Sometimes Janie would think of the old days in the big white house
Here, we see Janie going back to Eatonville and remembering the house.  She laughs to herself because she is actually taking part in people talking and playing games, and she only imagines how the people of Eatonville would judge her.  Here we get a sense of her inner thoughts and perhaps her satisfaction of where she is now, home.
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She got so she could tell big stories herself from listening to the rest. 
Janie finally gets to speak of her experiences and others are listening.  Tea Cake enjoys listening to her as well as others. This is very important here because besides her gaining a voice as well, she is interacting positively with the community.  
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No matter how rough it was, people seldom got mad
Janie had lived in Eatonville as Mayor Starks wife, and a helper at the store.  When she said or did something wrong, people most likely were bothered and would tell her what she had done.  Here in the muck, however, we get a sense that Janie finds an oddness in people finding things funny, even though some things were not always funny.  
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