As Virginia helps Leonard and Ralph with the printing press, a servant announces Virginia's sister has arrived. Vanessa, Virginia's sister, is one-and-a-half hours early. Leonard refuses to stop working, so Virginia attends to Vanessa alone. At this time, the viewer realizes her mental problems create a fear for the maids. Virginia and Vanessa go out into the garden where Vanessa's children found a dying bird. Vanessa, mirroring the character of Kitty in the Mrs. Brown vignettes, has an effortless competence with life's details, be it servants or children; this highlights Virginia's own awkwardness with her lot in life. Virginia believes, as she watches Vanessa's children, that the real accomplishment in life is not her "experiments in narrative" but the producing of children, which Vanessa achieved. Virginia is out of place in such a society.