color. Elfrida seemed to be unaware of the opening of
the new South Ward Episcopal Methodist Church. She
overlooked the municipal elections too, the plan for
overhauling the town waterworks, and the reorganization
of the public library. She even forgot the Browning Club.

Whereas--though Elfrida would never have said "whereas"
--the days in Philadelphia had been long and full. She
had often lived a week in one of them, and there had been
hours that stretched themselves over an infinity of life
and feeling, as Elfrida saw it, looking back. 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