Mrs. Murret. Yes; that's when I took care of him. I offered to take care of Lee for her. It seemed like he was—I don't know how that came along, but it seems like there was someone else, I think, some lady and her husband—I couldn't tell you who they were or anything like that, but they were crazy about the child. She had told me about that and so forth, but then I met her in town one day and she was telling me how they felt about the child, but I told her, I said, "Well, I'll keep Lee for a while, you know, as long as I could." I offered to keep Lee at an age when he was a very beautiful child. Now, I wouldn't say he was smarter than any other child his age. He might have been smarter than some 3-year-olds and so forth, but he was really a cute child, very friendly, and so I kept him and I would take him to town, and when I would he would have on one of these little sailor suits, and he really looked cute, and he would holler, "Hi," to everybody, and people in town would stop me and say, "What an adorable child he is," and so forth, and he was always so friendly, and, of course, I did the best I could with him. The children at home liked him. John Edward and Robert are the same age as my fourth and fifth children, so—in other words, I had five children in 7 years, making them all around the same age, from 7 to 19 months apart, so, of course, everybody was of school age, grammar school. I had to get my own five children ready for school, and I didn't have any help on that and it kept me pretty busy, and that's why I guess it was that Lee started slipping out of the house in his nightclothes and going down the block and sitting down in somebody's kitchen. He could slip out like nobody's business. You could have everything locked in the house, and he would still get out. We lived in a basement house, and we had gates up and everything, but he would still get out.

Mr. Jenner. What do you mean by a basement house?

Mrs. Murret. Oh, that's one that's raised off the ground. The house has a few steps going up to the door, and it has a basement underneath, which a lot of people make into living quarters, underneath.

Mr. Jenner. All right. He was 3 years old when he was living with you at your house, and at that time she had gone back to work; is that right?

Mrs. Murret. She had gone back to work; yes, sir.

Mr. Jenner. What sort of work did she do?

Mrs. Murret. She was a saleswoman. I think she worked in quite a few of the stores in town.

Mr. Jenner. Here in New Orleans?

Mrs. Murret. Yes.

Mr. Jenner. I assume her earnings were small?