Ownership seemed only a reasonable return for the cares and expenses of a daughter’s upbringing.  Daughters were not like sons.  He perceived, however, that both the novels he read and the world he lived in discountenanced these assumptions.  Nothing else was put in their place, and they remained sotto voce, as it were, in his mind.  The new and the old cancelled out; his daughters became quasi-independent dependents—­which is absurd.  One married as he wished and one against his wishes, and now here was Ann Veronica, his little Vee, discontented with her beautiful, safe, and sheltering home, going about with hatless friends to Socialist meetings and art-class dances, and displaying a disposition to carry her scientific ambitions to unwomanly lengths.  She seemed to think he was merely the paymaster, handing over the means of her freedom.  And now she insisted that she must leave the chastened security of the Tredgold Women’s College for Russell’s unbridled classes, and wanted to go to fancy dress dances in pirate costume and spend the residue of the night with Widgett’s ramshackle girls in some indescribable hotel in Soho!

He had done his best not to think about her at all, but the situation and his sister had become altogether too urgent.  He had finally put aside The Lilac Sunbonnet, gone into his study, lit the gas fire, and written the letter that had brought these unsatisfactory relations to a head.

Part 4

My dear Vee, he wrote.

These daughters!  He gnawed his pen and reflected, tore the sheet up, and began again.

“My dear Veronica,—­Your aunt tells me you have involved yourself in some arrangement with the Widgett girls about a Fancy Dress Ball in London.  I gather you wish to go up in some fantastic get-up, wrapped about in your opera cloak, and that after the festivities you propose to stay with these friends of yours, and without any older people in your party, at an hotel.  Now I am sorry to cross you in anything you have set your heart upon, but I regret to say—­”

“H’m,” he reflected, and crossed out the last four words.

“—­but this cannot be.”

“No,” he said, and tried again:  “but I must tell you quite definitely that I feel it to be my duty to forbid any such exploit.”

“Damn!” he remarked at the defaced letter; and, taking a fresh sheet, he recopied what he had written.  A certain irritation crept into his manner as he did so.

“I regret that you should ever have proposed it,” he went on.

He meditated, and began a new paragraph.

“The fact of it is, and this absurd project of yours only brings it to a head, you have begun to get hold of some very queer ideas about what a young lady in your position may or may not venture to do.  I do not think you quite understand my ideals or what is becoming as between father and daughter.  Your attitude to me—­”