“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 notebook 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 daughter rebuking her for eating with the wrong fork or guzzling the soup or staining the cloth. In a fit of rebellion Hanneh Breineh resolved never to go down to the public dining-room again, but to make use of the gas-stove in the kitchenette to cook her own meals. That very day she rode down to Delancey Street and purchased a new market-basket. For some time she walked among the haggling pushcart venders, relaxing and swimming in the warm waves of her old familiar past. A fish-peddler held up a large carp in his black, hairy hand and waved it dramatically: “Women! Women! Fourteen cents a pound!” He ceased his raucous shouting as he saw Hanneh Breineh in her rich attire approach his cart. “How much?” she asked, pointing to the fattest carp.