When she noticed it, she was amused at the way the "extras" stood back and looked at her and whispered together.

More than once she overheard what seemed almost to have become a catch-phrase out here; "Jean of the lazy A" was the phrase.
Jean was not made of wood, understand.

In a manner she recognized all these little tributes, and to a certain degree she appreciated them.
She was glad that she had made such a success of it, but she was glad because it would help her to take her dad away from that horrible, ghastly place and that horrible, ghastly death-in-life under which he lived.

In three years he had grown old and stooped--her dad! And Burns twitted her ironically because she could not simper and lose her head over the attentions these people were loading upon her! Save for the fact that in this way she could earn a good deal of money, and could pay that lawyer Rossman, and trace Art Osgood, she would not have stayed; she could not have endured the staying.

For the easier they made life for her, the greater contrast did they make between her and her dad.
Gil brought her a great bunch of roses, unbelievably beautiful and fragrant, and laughed and told her they didn't look much like those snowdrifts she waded through the last day they worked on the Lazy A serial.