"Are you a good speller?" I asked
"I c'n spell all the words we get at school," she answered, sagely
"How do you spell 'colonel'?"
"We never got it at school. But you can't spell it, either."
"How do you know I can't? Maybe I can. Well, let us take an easier word. How do you spell 'because'?"
She spelled it correctly, her mother joining in playfully. I gave them other words, addressing myself to both, and they made a race of it, each trying to head off or outshout the other. At first Mrs. Margolis did so with feigned gaiety, but her face soon set into a grave look and glowed with excitement
At last I asked them to spell "coefficient."
"We never got it at school," Lucy demurred
"I don't know what it means," said Mrs. Margolis, with a shrug of her shoulders.
"It means something in mathematics, in high figuring," I explained in Yiddish