She was wearing a torn and filthy cotton dress and about her head was bound a spotted pink and white handkerchief. With her vast bosom and ample span of hip she looked almost as broad as she was long. On seeing me she bobbed.
"You'm Señor Commandante?" she asked in English in her soft negro voice.
"Yes," I replied, rather taken aback by this droll apparition. "What did you want with me?"
"I has a letter for you, suh!"
She plunged a brown hand into the unfathomable depths of her opulent corsage.
"From Doña Luisa?" I asked expectantly.
The negress stopped her groping and grinned up at me with flashing teeth. Her eyeballs glistened white as her face lit up with a broad smile. Then she tapped herself with a grimy paw.
"I is Doña Luisa!" she announced with pride.
I staggered beneath the shock of this revelation. My vision of a sloe-eyed damsel in a mantilla vanished in smoke.
"I has a fine Spanish name," remarked the lady resuming her spasmodic searchings of her person, "but I wus riz in N'Awleans. That's how I talks English so good! Ah!"