Mrs.Lessways was not good at strategy, especially in conflicts with her daughter.

She was an ingenuous, hasty thing, and much too candidly human.

And not only was she deficient in practical common sense and most absurdly unable to learn from experience, but she had not even the wit to cover her shortcomings by resorting to the traditional authoritativeness of the mother.

Her brief, rare efforts to play the mother were ludicrous.

She was too simply honest to acquire stature by standing on her maternal dignity.