492
PARTISAN REVIEW
Lucy must indeed have been unaware of how deeply her hus–
band resisted her carelessness in these matters and of what her
daughter was now feeling. Otherwise she would not have begun her
story, her eyes narrowing in anger at the recollection, "Oh, such a
rotten thing happened on the way home on the bus."
It was Elwin who had had the thing happen on the bus, not
quite "rotten" but sufficiently disturbing, and he was startled, as if
his wife's consciousness had in some way become mixed up with his
own in a clairvoyant experience. And this feeling was not diminished
as Lucy told her story about a young woman who had asked the con–
ductor a question. It was a simple, ordinary question, Lucy said, about
what street one transferred at. The conductor at first had not answer–
ed, and then, when he came around again and the question was
asked again, he had looked at the young woman-"looked her straight
in the face," Lucy said-and had replied in a loud voice, "Vot deed
you shay?"
((Mother!"
cried Margaret. Her voice was all absolute childish
horror.
Elwin at once saw what was happening, but Lucy, absorbed in
what she had experienced, only said mildly, "What's the matter,
dear?"
"Mother !'I' Margaret grieved, "you mustn't do that." Her face
was quite aghast and she \vas standing stiff with actual fright.
"Why, do what, Margaret?" said Lucy. She was troubled for her
daughter but entirely bewildered.
"Make fun of-fun of-" But Margaret could not say it.
"Of Jews?" said Elwin in a loud, firm, downight voice.
Margaret nodded miserably. Elwin said with enough sharpness,
"Margaret, whatever makes you think that Lucy is making fun of
Jews? She is simply repeating--"
'-
"Oh," Margaret cried, her face a silly little moon of gratitude
and relief. "Oh," she said happily, "What the woman said to the
conductor!"
"No, Margaret. How absurd!" Lucy cried.
«Not
what the wo–
man said to the conductor. What the conductor said to the woman."
Margaret just sat there glowering with silence and anger.
Elwin said to Margaret with a pedagogic clearness and patience,
"The conductor was making fun of the woman for being Jewish."
"Not at all," Lucy said, beginning to be a little tried by so much
misunderstanding. "Not at all, she wasn't Jewish at all. He was in–
sulting her by pretending that she was Jewish."
