that evening

I have said that despite her passionate devotion to Lucy she was jealous of her. She was jealous not only of the school education she was receiving, but also of her American birth

She was feverishly ambitious to bring up her children in the "real American syle," and the realization of her helplessness in this direction caused her many a pang of despair. She was thirstily seeking for information on the subject of table manners, and whatever knowledge she possessed of it she would practise, and make Lucy practise, with amusing pomp and circumstance.

"Don't reach out for the herring, Lucy!" she would say, sternly.
"How many times must I tell you about it? What do you say?"
"Pass me the herring, mamma, please." "Not 'mamma.'"

"Pass me the herring, mother, please."

The herring is passed with what Dora regards as a lady-like gesture

"Thank you, ma'am," says Lucy

"There is another way," Dora might add in a case of this kind. "Instead of saying, 'Pass me the herring or the butter,' you can say—What is it, Lucy?"

"May I trouble you for the herring, mother?"

I asked her to keep track of my table etiquette, too, and she did. Whenever I made a break she would correct my error solemnly, or with a burst of merriment, or with a scandalized air, as if she had caught me in the act of committing a felony. This was her revenge for my general intellectual superiority, which she could not help admitting and envying

"You just let her teach you and she will make a man of you," Max would say to me.

Sometimes, when I mispronounced an English word with which she happened to be familiar, or uttered an English phrase in my Talmudic singsong, she would mock me gloatingly. On one such occasion I felt the sting of her triumph so keenly that I hastened to lower her crest by pointing out that she had said "nice" where "nicely" was in order

"What do you mean?" she asked, perplexedly

My reply was an ostentatious discourse on adjectives and adverbs, something which I knew to be utterly beyond her depth. It had the intended effect. She listened to my explanation stupidly, and when I had finished she said, with resignation: "I don't understand what you say. I wish I had time to go to evening school, at least, as you did.