"I was always pleased around Edith and her sisters. They all thought I was pretty, all except Ellen, the baby, and she thought I was 'beautiful.'"
Phyllisia spends her time with Edith and her siblings because she enjoys the attention. At home, Phyl's father intentionally ignores her and humiliates her for not being as beautiful as her sister and mother, so at Edith's house she receives some much needed validation. Unfortunately, the flip-side to this experience is the fact that Phyl is using Edith for validation rather than treating her like a normal friend.
"'Proud? Proud indeed!' I recoiled from the venom of her attack. 'It is a trick! This thing beauty they talk about. Believe me, it is a low trick put out by God self.' Her face was flushed with anger. 'He puts meaning into beauty, and reduces the meaning to nothing.'"
After inviting Edith over in order to show her all the Cathy family wealth, Phyllisia is chastised by her mom. Her mother sees right through the purpose of Edith's visit and doesn't like the way her daughter is treating Edith. Because Mrs. Cathy knows that her husband values beauty, she's aware that Phyl has been raised to also value it, but she desires to reform the position of material and physical beauty in her daughter's priority list.
"My face was burned with shame. Sitting there and not answering was like begging. And why should I beg? I had done nothing to anybody."
Phyl's relationship to her father is strained, to say the least. He runs his household like a tyrant, lecturing Phyl about things beyond her control and refusing to allow her to respond. In her response, the reader can see that Phyllisia demonstrates a similar pride as her father. Just the same way as he assumes that other people should bend to his will, she feels strongly compelled to elevate her own status in the family.
"I did not like her. Edith always came to school with her clothes unpressed, her stockings bagging about her legs with high holes, which she tried to hide by pulling them into her shoes but which kept slipping up, on each heel, to expose a round, brown circle of dry skin the size of a quarter. Of course there were many children in this class that were untidy and whom I did not like. Some were tough. So tough that I was afraid of them. But at least they did not have to sit right across the aisle from me. Nor did they try to be friendly as Edith did - whenever she happened to come to school."
At first, Phyllisia resents Edith for her poverty and general lack of hygiene. Phyl is privileged enough to live in a clean, well-decorated, comfortable home where her parents provide clean clothes for her regularly. She doesn't appreciate the struggle of the lower-income families' children in her class. Because Edith sits across the aisle from her, however, Phyl is forced to consider her own resent on a daily basis. Eventually she determines that Edith is kind and worth trusting, even though Phyl privately retains a sense of disgust for her poor clothes.
