Funny father!

Or how to eat a herring.

"Herrings! Well, a herring is one of the most delicious fish,
if it's eaten properly. There's a right way to eat a herring and
a wrong way. Now watch me and I'll show you how to eat a herring.
Rosalie, watch."

"Rosalie, dear," (from her mother) "watch while your father shows
you how to eat a herring."

All eyes on father demonstrating how to eat a herring!

And Rosalie used to notice this about the watching eyes. Her
mother's eyes--most anxiously and nervously upon the operation, as
if watching a thing she would soon be called upon to perform and
would not be able to perform; the eyes of Robert (14) sulkily;
of Flora (18) admiringly (it was getting to be a complaint in the
family circle that Flora "sucked up" to father); the eyes of Anna
(20) wearily; the eyes of Harold (22) contemptuously.

The herrings (a very frequent dish at the rectory, so much cheaper
than meat) came headless to the table. First father nipped off the
tail with a firm, neat stroke. Then he deftly slit the herring down
the stomach. It fell into two exact perfectly divided halves. Then
he lifted out the backbone, not one scrap of flesh adhering to it,
and laid it on the side of his plate. Then four firm pressures of
his knife and the little lateral bones were exactly removed and
exactly laid on the backbone. Next a precise insertion of his fork