The woman looked bewildered.
"You make hats?" Hamilton continued, perceiving at a glance that the woman was foreign-born.
"Is it a hatter zat you want?" she asked.
"No, no," the boy replied, "I just want to know if you are a milliner?"
The Frenchwoman, not at all enlightened by this explanation, answered:
"I do not make ze hats; I design zem, and ze ozzers make zem."
"Oh, I thought you were the proprietor," said Hamilton; "then you don't own this place!"
"I am ze proprietor, but I do not own ze house," she said; "I pay ze rent. But why you ask? I pay my rent!"
"Oh, of course," answered Hamilton, "but that has nothing to do with it. I did not wish to trouble you that way. I come from the census, and wanted to make sure that this was the place I was looking for."
"What is zat—ze census?"