M. daily.
Three blocks up Walnut the pavement ends. Beyond that sidewalks too,
listlessly peter out. A young, but enthusiastically growing ditch is
beginning to separate path from street. Houses begin to take on a more
dilapidated appearance. They lean uncertainly.
A colored woman stops to stare at the white one, plants herself directly
in the stranger's path and demands, "Is you the investigator? No? Well
who is you looking for? Oh, Mose, he's at his son's. Good thing I
stopped you. Cause you would have gone too far. He's at his son's. His
grandson just done had his tonsils out. He's over there."
The interviewer climbed the ladder-like steps leading to "his son's
house". No Mose wasn't there. He had just left. Maybe he'd gone home.
The de-tonsiled child proved to be a bright eyed, saddle-colored
youngster of three, enormously interested in the stranger. He wore
whip-cord jodphurs--protruding widely on either side of his plump
thighs--and knee high leather riding boots. Plump and smiling, he looked
for all the world like a kewpie provided with a kink ey crown and
blistered to a rich chocolate by a friendly sun.
The child eyed the interviewer's pencil. Since, she was carrying a
"spare" she offered it to him.
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