"
Enumerator looks hard from her to washtub.
"Ah--er--oh, ah washes a couple o' gentlemen's clot'es."
"Very good. Now then, how many children?"
"We don' git no children, sah."
"What! How did that happen?"
Loud, house-shaking laughter.
Enumerator (looking at watch and finding it 12:10): "Well, good
afternoon."
"Good evenin', sah. Thank you, sah. Te! He!"
Variations on the above might fill many pages:
"How old are you?"
Self-appointed interpreter of the same shade; "He as' how old is
yo?"
"How old _I_ are? Ah don rightly know mah age, mahster, mah mother
never tol' me."
St. Lucian woman, evidently about forty-five, after deep thought,
plainly anxious to be as truthful as possible: "Er--ah's twenty,
sir."
"Oh, you're older than that. About sixty, say?"
"'Bout dat, sah."
"Are you married?"
(Pushing the children out of the way.) "N-not as yet, mah sweet
mahster, bu-but--but we go 'n' be soon, sah."
To a Barbadian woman of forty: "Just you and your daughter live
here?"
"Dat's all, sir."
"Doesn't your husband live here?"
"Oh, ah don't never marry as yet, sah."
Anent the old saying about the partnership of life and hope.
To a Dominican woman of fifty-two, toothless and pitted with
small-pox: "Are you married?"
(With simpering smile) "Not as yet, mah sweet mahster.
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