By the time she left school she was a tall,
giggling, black-eyed creature, to be found walking up and down Mission
Street, and gossiping and chewing gum on almost any sunny afternoon.
Between her mother's whining and her father's bullying, home life was
not very pleasant, but at least there was nothing unusual in the
situation; among all the girls that Emeline knew there was not one who
could go back to a clean room, a hospitable dining-room, a well-cooked
and nourishing meal. All her friends did as she did: wheedled money for
new veils and new shoes from their fathers, helped their mothers
reluctantly and scornfully when they must, slipped away to the street as
often as possible, and when they were at home, added their complaints
and protests to the general unpleasantness.
Had there been anything different before her eyes, who knows what plans
for domestic reform might have taken shape in the girl's plastic brain?
Emeline had never seen one example of real affection and cooperation
between mother and daughters, of work quickly and skilfully done and
forgotten, of a clean bright house and a blossoming garden; she had
never heard a theory otherwise than that she was poor, her friends were
poor, her parents were poor, and that born under the wheels of a
monstrous social injustice, she might just as well be dirty and
discouraged and discontented at once and have done with it, for in the
end she must be so.
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