From her window she could see young people, hear young voices, and envy flamed in her soul.

Those girls were her age; those men, easy, immaculate, different from anything she had ever seen--except Calvin Gray--they, too, were young and they courted those girls.

Contemplation of the chattering throngs showed Allie more clearly than ever the chasm separating her from these people, and reawakened in her that black resentment which at times made her so difficult to manage.

She was thankful that her mother had disappeared and that her father was at the livery stable; she hoped they would stay away all day.

At least, they were safe from ridicule.
She wondered if she might not induce them to dine in their rooms that evening, and thus spare herself the embarrassment she always suffered when she accompanied them into the public dining room.
It seemed to her that whenever they went to dinner--Gus in his baggy pepper-and-salt sack suit, his loose, lay-down collar, and his wide-toed shoes, Ma in one of her giddy, gaudy dinner dresses--it seemed as if the entire assemblage was stricken dumb and as if every eye was turned upon them in mockery and amusement.