The Undomestic Daughter thus acquires the conviction that she herself is the most miserably crushed member of a down-trodden sex.  In this, and in the agreement which she exacts from two or three melancholy friends, she seeks a solace for her sufferings.  After a time, however, she discovers that this is insufficient.  It must be said to her credit that her energies find the outlet of a passive sorrow inadequate.  She burns to prove that one who is misunderstood and despised cannot only find useful work to do, but can do it better than her humdrum domestic sisters.  Unfortunately, however, she overlooks the obvious and easy duties of her home.  She scans the remote corners of the world.  Her bruised spirit flutters about the bye-ways of charitable effort, and at length she establishes herself as a visitor, a distributer of tracts and blankets, and an instructor of factory girls.  It is unnecessary to insist that these occupations are useful and praiseworthy in the abstract.  It may be doubted, however, whether they should be undertaken by one who has to neglect for them equally necessary but less attractive labours.

The Undomestic Daughter, however, rejoices in the performance of work, which, as it were, sets a seal to her wretchedness, and stamps her as a being apart from the ruck of her sex.  She now takes her meals alone, and at her own hours.  She probably breakfasts at half-past seven, and dashes out to interview the Secretary of the Society for Improving the Cultivation of Mustard and Cress on the Desert Patches of the Mile End District.  After this she will hasten to Lambeth, in order that mothers residing in that teeming quarter of the town may be blessed with mittens and mob-caps, and returning thence she devotes an hour or so to lectures which are to make her expert in tending the ailments of humanity.  Occasionally the family arrangements are upset, in order that she may have her dinner at an hour which will make it convenient to her to attend the meeting of an Institute for Reading Historical Novels to Working Girls, and her father will lose all his available stock of good temper on finding that the moments generally devoted by him to soup are occupied to his exclusion by the apple-tart provided for his busy daughter.  Hence come more storms and misunderstandings.  Paternal feet are put down—­for a time, and neglected excellence pines in bed-rooms.

Shortly afterwards the Undomestic Daughter discovers that nature intended her to be a hospital nurse, and she takes advantage of a period when her mother, being occupied in tending a younger brother through scarlatina cannot offer a determined opposition, to wring an unwilling consent from her father, and to leave her home in order to carry out her plan.  This phase, however, does not last many weeks, and she is soon back once more on the parental hands.  Thus the years pass on, the monotony of neglecting her home being varied by occasional outbursts of enthusiasm