It enabled them to look down upon those who were without such tastes; but they were not ill-natured, and so they did not look down so much with contempt as with amusement.

In their unfashionable neighborhood they had the fame of being not exclusive precisely, but very much wrapped up in themselves and their children.
Mrs.March was reputed to be very cultivated, and Mr.March even more so, among the simpler folk around them.

Their house had some good pictures, which her aunt had brought home from Europe in more affluent days, and it abounded in books on which he spent more than he ought.
They had beautified it in every way, and had unconsciously taken credit to them selves for it.

They felt, with a glow almost of virtue, how perfectly it fitted their lives and their children's, and they believed that somehow it expressed their characters--that it was like them.

They went out very little; she remained shut up in its refinement, working the good of her own; and he went to his business, and hurried back to forget it, and dream his dream of intellectual achievement in the flattering atmosphere of her sympathy.