In reality, her experience had been usual enough and poor enough; but it had fed her in a way, and she enriched it with her imagination, and thought, with keen and sincere pity, that she had been starved till then.

The question that preoccupied her when she moved out of the Philadelphia station in the Chicago train was that of future sustenance.
It was under the surface of her thoughts when she kissed her father and mother and was made welcome home; it raised a mute remonstrance against Mr.Bell's cheerful prophecy that she would be content to stay in Sparta for a while now, and get to know the young society; it neutralized the pleasure of the triumphs in the packing-box.

Besides, their real delight had all been exhaled at the students' exhibition in Philadelphia, when Philadelphia looked at them.

The opinion of Sparta, Elfrida thought, was not a matter for anxiety.

Sparta would be pleased in advance.
Elfrida allowed one extenuating point in her indictment of Sparta: the place had produced her as she was at eighteen, when they sent her to Philadelphia.