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. I haven't any idea of these things. Lucy will be educated for both of us, for herself and for her poor mamma. If my mother had understood as much as I do it would have been different." She uttered a sigh, fell silent, and then resumed: "But I can't complain of my mother, either. She was a diamond of a woman, and she was wise as daylight. But Russia is not America. No, I can't complain of my parents. My father was a poor man, but ask Max or some of our fellow-townspeople and they will tell you what a fine name he had."
She was talkative and somewhat boastful like the average woman of her class, but there was about her an elusive effect of reserve and earnestness that kept me at a distance from her. Moreover, the tireless assiduity and precision which she brought to her housework and, above all, the grim passion of her intellectual struggles created an atmosphere of physical and spiritual tidiness about her that inspired me with something like reverence.