It was confidently expected by the Murchison family that when Stella was old enough she would be a good deal in society.

Stella, without doubt, was well equipped for society; she had exactly those qualities which appealed to it in Elgin, among which I will mention two--the quality of being able to suggest that she was quite as good as anybody without saying so, and the even more important quality of not being any better.
Other things being equal--those common worldly standards that prevailed in Elgin as well as anywhere else in their degree--other things being equal, this second simple quality was perhaps the most important of all.
Mr and Mrs Murchison made no claim and small attempt upon society.

One doubts whether, with children coming fast and hard times long at the door, they gave the subject much consideration; but if they did, it is highly unlikely to have occurred to them that they were too good for their environment.

Yet in a manner they were.

It was a matter of quality, of spiritual and mental fabric; they were hardly aware that they had it, but it marked them with a difference, and a difference is the one thing a small community, accustomed comfortably to scan its own intelligible averages, will not tolerate.