These young aristocrats were, for the most part, students from the
town itself, from La Chance's "best families," who through parental
tyranny or temporary financial depression were not allowed to go East
to a well-known college with a sizable matriculation fee, but were
forced to endure four years of the promiscuous, swarming, gratuitous
education of the State University. All these august victims of family
despotism associated as little as possible with the common rabble of
their fellow-students, and accepted invitations only from such faculty
families as were recognized by the inner circle of the town society.
The Marshalls were not among this select circle. Indeed, no faculty
family was farther from it. Every detail of the Marshalls' life was in
contradiction not only to the standards and ideals of the exclusive
"town set," but to those of their own colleagues. They did not live
in the right part of town. They did not live in the right sort of a
house. They did not live in the right sort of a way. And consequently,
although no family had more visitors, they were not the right sort of
visitors.
This was, of course, not apparent to the children for a good many
years. Home was home, as it is to children. It did not seem strange
to them that instead of living in a small rented house on a closely
built-up street near the campus in the section of the city occupied by
the other faculty families, they lived in a rambling, large-roomed old
farmhouse with five acres of land around it, on the edge of the West
Side.
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