Questions 2 and 3 are based on the passage below.
Choose the best answer for each question.
Excerpted from Langston Hughes, “Thank You, Ma’am” © 1996 by Ramona Bass and Arnold Rampersad. Published in Short Stories Langston Hughes by Hill and Wang Publishing. Originally published in 1958. In this story, Mrs. Jones (“the woman”) catches a boy trying to steal her purse. She takes the boy back to her home.
In another corner of the room behind a screen was a gas plate and an icebox. Mrs. Jones got up and went behind the screen. The woman did not watch the boy to see if he was going to run now, nor did she watch her purse which she left behind her on the daybed. But the boy took care to sit on the far side of the room where he thought she could easily see him out of the corner of her eye, if she wanted to. He did not trust the woman not to trust him. And he did not want to be mistrusted now.
“Do you need somebody to go to the store,” asked the boy, “maybe to get some milk or something?”
“Don’t believe I do,” said the woman, “unless you just want sweet milk yourself. I was going to make cocoa out of this canned milk I got here.”
“That will be fine,” said the boy.
She heated some lima beans and ham she had in the icebox, made the cocoa, and set the table. The woman did not ask the boy anything about where he lived, or his folks, or anything else that would embarrass him. Instead, as they ate, she told him about her job in a hotel beauty shop that stayed open late, what the work was like, and how all kinds of women came in and out, blondes, redheads, and Spanish. Then she cut him a half of her ten-cent cake.
“Eat some more, son,” she said.
