No matter what its disadvantages are, having a home of any kind is vastly preferable to having none.

And the casualness of people so driven by the demands of living and money making that they do not take time even to be slightly courteous and kind, no matter how objectionable it may be, still that, even that, is better than their active displeasure.

So she sat brooding and going over and over the summer, arguing her side of the case, honestly trying to see theirs, until she was mentally exhausted and still had accomplished nothing further than arriving at the conclusion that if Nancy Ellen was forced to postpone her wedding she would turn against her and influence Robert Gray in the same feeling.
Then Kate thought of Him.

She capitalized him in her thought, for after nineteen years of Bates men Robert Gray would seem a deified creature to their women.

She reviewed the scene at the crossing log, while her face flushed with pleasure.