o rise
in the world because a man is free to go up as high as he can reach up
to; but I, with all my style and pep, can't get a man my equal because
a girl is always judged by her mother."

They were silenced by her vehemence, and unconsciously turned to Benny.

"I guess we all tried to do our best for mother," said Benny,
thoughtfully. "But wherever there is growth, there is pain and
heartbreak. The trouble with us is that the Ghetto of the Middle Ages
and the children of the twentieth century have to live under one roof,
and----"

A sound of crashing dishes came from the kitchen, and the voice of
Hanneh Breineh resounded through the dining-room as she wreaked her
pent-up fury on the helpless servant.

"Oh, my nerves! I can't stand it any more! There will be no girl again
for another week," cried Fanny.

"Oh, let up on the old lady," protested Abe. "Since she can't take it
out on us any more, what harm is it if she cusses the servants?"

"If you fellows had to chase around employment agencies, you wouldn't
see anything funny about it. Why can't we move into a hotel that will do
away with the need of servants altogether?"

"I got it better," said Jake, consulting a note-book from his pocket. "I
have on my list an apartment on Riverside Drive where there's only a
small kitchenette; but we can do away with the cooking, for there is a
dining service in the building."

The new Riverside apartment to which Hanneh Breineh was removed by her
socially ambitious children was for the habitually active mother an
empty desert of enforced idleness. Deprived of her kitchen, Hanneh
Breineh felt robbed of the last reason for her existence. Cooking and
marketing and puttering busily with pots and pans gave her an excuse for
living and struggling and bearing up with her children. The lonely
idleness of Riverside Drive stunned all her senses and arrested all her
thoughts. It gave her that choked sense of being cut off from air, from
life, from everything warm and human. The cold indifference, the
each-for-himself look in the eyes of the people about her were like
stinging slaps in the face. Even the children had nothing real or human
in them. They were starched and stiff miniatures of their elders.

But the most unendurable part of the stifling life on Riverside Drive
was being forced to eat in the public dining-room. No matter how hard
she tried to learn polite table manners, she always found people staring
at her, and her dau