“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