Rachel. "What pretty colors! Are
they your husband's school or college?"

"No," said Morna, blushing as she laughed again. "No, they're my own
college colors."

Rachel stood still on the grass.

"Have you really been at college?" said she; but her tone was so
obviously one of envy that Morna, who was delightfully sensitive about
her learning, did not even think of the short answer which she sometimes
returned to the astonished queries of the intellectually vulgar, but
admitted the impeachment with another laugh.

"Now, don't say you wouldn't have thought it of me," she added, "and
don't say you would!"

"I am far too jealous to say anything at all," Rachel answered with a
flattering stare. "And do you mean to tell me that you took a degree?"

"Of sorts," admitted Morna, whose spoken English was by no means
undefiled. But it turned out to have been a mathematical degree; and
when, under sympathetic pressure, Morna vouchsafed particulars, even
Rachel knew enough to appreciate the honors which the vicar's wife had
won. What was more difficult to understand was how so young a woman of
such distinguished attainments could be content to hide her light under
the bushel of a country vicarage; and Rachel could not resist some
expression of her wonderment on that point.

"Did you do nothing with it all," she asked, "before you married?"

"No," said Morna; "you see, I got engaged in the middle of it, and the
week after the lists came out we were married."

"What a career to have given up!"

"I would give it up again," said Morna, with a warmer blush; and Rachel
was left with a deeper envy.

"I am afraid we shall have nothing in common," sighed Mrs. Steel, as
they neared the house. "I have no education worthy the name."

Morna waxed all but indignant at the implication; she had a morbid
horror of being considered a "blue-stocking," which she revealed with
much girlish naivete and unconscious simplicity of sentiment and praise.
She was not so narrow as all that; she had had enough of learning; she
had forgotten all that she had learnt; any dolt could be crammed to pass
examinations. On the contrary, she was quite sure they would have heaps
in common; for example, she was longing for some one to bicycle with;
her husband seldom had the time, and he did not care for her to go quite
alone in the country roads.

"But I don't bicycle," said Mrs. Steel, shaking her head rather sadly.

"Ah, I forgot! People who ride and d