She had evidently been brought up with few illusions.

These she possessed would always be hers.
The world, in a kindly but mistaken spirit, fosters all sorts of beliefs in the head of a child.

True, it makes childhood happy, but it leaves its skin tender.

The moment a girl covers her slippers with skirts and winds her hair about the top of her curious young head, things begin to jar.

The men are not what she dreamed them to be, there never was such a person as Prince Charming; and the women embrace her--if she is pretty and graceful--with arms bristling with needles of envy and malice; and the rosal tint that she saw in the approach is nothing more or less than jaundice; and, one day disheartened and bewildered, she learns that the world is only a jumble of futile, ill-made things.