ome. It's all very fine and
all that, Vee, this freedom, but it isn't going to work. The world isn't
ready for girls to start out on their own yet; that's the plain fact of
the case. Babies and females have got to keep hold of somebody or go
under--anyhow, for the next few generations. You go home and wait a
century, Vee, and then try again. Then you may have a bit of a chance.
Now you haven't the ghost of one--not if you play the game fair."

Part 6

It was remarkable to Ann Veronica how completely Mr. Manning, in his
entirely different dialect, indorsed her brother Roddy's view of things.
He came along, he said, just to call, with large, loud apologies,
radiantly kind and good. Miss Stanley, it was manifest, had given him
Ann Veronica's address. The kindly faced landlady had failed to catch
his name, and said he was a tall, handsome gentleman with a great black
mustache. Ann Veronica, with a sigh at the cost of hospitality, made a
hasty negotiation for an extra tea and for a fire in the ground-floor
apartment, and preened herself carefully for the interview. In the
little apartment, under the gas chandelier, his inches and his stoop
were certainly very effective. In the bad light he looked at once
military and sentimental and studious, like one of Ouida's guardsmen
revised by Mr. Haldane and the London School of Economics and finished
in the Keltic school.

"It's unforgivable of me to call, Miss Stanley," he said, shaking hands
in a peculiar, high, fashionable manner; "but you know you said we might
be friends."

"It's dreadful for you to be here," he said, indicating the yellow
presence of the first fog of the year without, "but your aunt told me
something of what had happened. It's just like your Splendid Pride to do
it. Quite!"

He sat in the arm-chair and took tea, and consumed several of the
extra cakes which she had sent out for and talked to her and expressed
himself, looking very earnestly at her with his deep-set eyes, and
carefully avoiding any crumbs on his mustache the while. Ann Veronica
sat firelit by her tea-tray with, quite unconsciously, the air of an
expert hostess.

"But how is it all going to end?" said Mr. Manning.

"Your father, of course," he said, "must come to realize just how
Splendid you are! He doesn't understand. I've seen him, and he doesn't
a bit understand. _I_ didn't understand before that letter. It makes me
want to be just everything I CAN be to you. You're like some s