evotion.

"And for me it has been Pride and Pride and Pride!

"I am the prodigal daughter. I will arise and go to my father, and will
say unto him--

"I suppose pride and self-assertion are sin? Sinned against heaven--Yes,
I have sinned against heaven and before thee....

"Poor old daddy! I wonder if he'll spend much on the fatted calf?...

"The wrappered life-discipline! One comes to that at last. I begin to
understand Jane Austen and chintz covers and decency and refinement and
all the rest of it. One puts gloves on one's greedy fingers. One learns
to sit up...

"And somehow or other," she added, after a long interval, "I must pay
Mr. Ramage back his forty pounds."

CHAPTER THE TWELFTH

ANN VERONICA PUTS THINGS IN ORDER

Part 1

Ann Veronica made a strenuous attempt to carry out her good resolutions.
She meditated long and carefully upon her letter to her father before
she wrote it, and gravely and deliberately again before she despatched
it.

"MY DEAR FATHER," she wrote,--"I have been thinking hard about
everything since I was sent to this prison. All these experiences have
taught me a great deal about life and realities. I see that compromise
is more necessary to life than I ignorantly supposed it to be, and I
have been trying to get Lord Morley's book on that subject, but it does
not appear to be available in the prison library, and the chaplain seems
to regard him as an undesirable writer."

At this point she had perceived that she was drifting from her subject.

"I must read him when I come out. But I see very clearly that as things
are a daughter is necessarily dependent on her father and bound while
she is in that position to live harmoniously with his ideals."

"Bit starchy," said Ann Veronica, and altered the key abruptly. Her
concluding paragraph was, on the whole, perhaps, hardly starchy enough.

"Really, daddy, I am sorry for all I have done to put you out. May I
come home and try to be a better daughter to you?

"ANN VERONICA."

Part 2

Her aunt came to meet her outside Canongate, and, being a little
confused between what was official and what was merely a rebellious
slight upon our national justice, found herself involved in a triumphal
procession to the Vindicator Vegetarian Restaurant, and was specifically
and personally cheered by a small, shabby crowd outside that rendezvous.
They decided quite audibly, "She's an Old Dear, anyhow. Voting wouldn't
do no 'arm to