Shivering at the thought she resolved to elude the punishment he was sure to inflict if he learned why she had been expelled.
She had no twinge of conscience.

She was used to slights and unkindness, and did not now reflect upon the justice of her dismissal.
What little pleasure she got came from friendships with boys, and these her father had forbidden her to have.

In the bitter web of her thought ran the threads that if she had pretty clothes like Helen, and a rich mother like Bessy, and a father who was not a drunkard, her lot in life would have been happy.
Rose lived with her stepfather in three dingy rooms in the mill section of Middleville.

She never left the wide avenues and lawns and stately residences, which she had to pass on her way to and from school, without contrasting them with the dirty alleys and grimy walls and squalid quarters of the working-class.

She had grown up in that class, but in her mind there was always a faint vague recollection of a time when her surroundings had been bright and cheerful, where there had been a mother who had taught her to love beautiful things.