Twenty or thirty women
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Erão de vinte a trinta negras, creoulas e mulatas, com suas tenras crias ao collo ou pelo chão a brincarem em derredor dellas.
There were twenty to thirty black, creole and mulatto women, their babies at the breast or playing on the floor around them.
The count is deliberate — twenty to thirty women, ranked by the era's colour-line (black, creole, mulatta) — but the detail that lingers is the babies at the breast and on the floor. Enslaved women worked with their children underfoot; the workroom is also a nursery, and Guimarães lets that quiet fact sit in the scene.
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A Escrava Isaura 7.4 — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/escravaisaura/7.4/