She frankly envied Nancy Ellen, while it never occurred to her that any one would criticise her for saying so.

Only one thing could happen to her that would surpass what had come to her sister.

If only she could have a man like Robert Gray, and have him on a piece of land of their own.
Kate was a girl, but no man of the Bates tribe ever was more deeply bitten by the lust for land.

She was the true daughter of her father, in more than one way.

If that very expensive hat was going to produce the man why not let it begin to work from the very start?
If her man was somewhere, only waiting to see her, and the hat would help him to speedy recognition, why miss a change?
She thought over the year, and while she deplored the estrangement from home, she knew that if she had to go back to one year ago, giving up the present and what it had brought and promised to bring, for a reconciliation with her father, she would not voluntarily return to the old driving, nagging, overwork, and skimping, missing every real comfort of life to buy land, in which she never would have any part.
"You get your knocks 'taking the wings of morning,'" thought Kate to herself, "but after all it is the only thing to do.