"For why should an up-to-date American girl like Clara like such an old-fashioned place as I keep? Nowadays, girls got different ideas. They don't think nothing of seventy-five-dollar suits and twelve-dollar shoes. I can't help it that it goes against my grain no matter how fine a money-maker a girl is. In the old country my sister Carrie and me never even had shoes on our feet until we were twelve, much less--" "But, ma--" "Oh, I don't blame her, Sam. I don't blame her that she don't like it the way I dish up everything on the table so we can serve ourselves. She likes it passed the way they did that night at Mrs. Goldfinger's new daughter-in-law's, where everything is carried from one to the next one, and you got to help yourself quick over your shoulders." "Clara's like me, ma; she wants you to keep a servant to do the waiting on you." "It ain't in me, Sam, to be bossed to by a servant, just like I can't take down off the walls pictures of your papa _selig_ and your grandma, because it ain't stylish they should be there. It's a feeling in me for my own flesh and blood that nothing can change." "Clara don't want you to change that, ma." "She's a fine, up-to-date girl, Sam. A girl that can work herself up to head floor-lady in wholesale ribbons and forty dollars a week has got in her the kind of smartness my boy should have in his wife. I'm an old woman standing in the way of my boy. If I wasn't, I could go out to Marietta, Ohio, by Ruby, and I wouldn't keep having inside of me such terrible fears for my boy and--and how things are now on the other side and--and--" "Now, now, ma; no April showers!" "An old woman that can't even be happy with a good daughter like Ruby, but hangs always on her son like a stone around his neck!" "You mean like a diamond." "A stone, holding him down." "Ma!" Mr. Lipkind pushed back, napkin awry at his throat and his eyes snapping points of light. "Now if you want to spoil my breakfast, just say so and I--I'll quit. Why should you be living with Ruby out in Marietta if you're happier here with me where you belong? If you knew how sore these here fits of yours make me, you'd cut them out--that's what you would. I'm not going over to Clara's at all now for supper, if that's how you feel about it." Mrs. Lipkind rose then, crossed, leaning over the back of his chair and inclosing his face in the quivering hold of her two hands. "Sammy, Sammy, I didn't mean it! I know I ain't in your way. How can I be when there ain't a day passes I don't invite you to get married and come here to live and fix the flat any way what Clara wants or even move down-town in a finer one where she likes it? I know I ain't in your way, son. I take it back." "Well, that's more like it." "You mustn't be mad at mamma when she gets old-fashioned ideas in her head." He stroked her hand at his cheek, pressing it closer. "Sit down and finish your breakfast, little sweetheart mamma." "Is it all right now, Sammy?"