"Most excellent Churchwoman! you object to change in the Authorized nearly as much as you would to a change in the Prayer Book. But really that piece that came out lately—of the saga, not the Prayer Book,—was quite inaccurate," Anita musingly added. "I am puzzled. I should care immensely about doing the whole thing as you have wanted me to. Bits go well. I confess I have done several when the spirit moved too hard. I could go on now I know." She raised her voice to be heard in a sudden gust. "It was written, or sung rather, to such a tune,—but up in the Seminar room the passion for accuracy falls on me and a sense of pride comes when I detect the accurate Professor Wirthau in an error. I quite despise that piece in English you spoke of. But now, come, I am in the other mood. Let us go into partnership. You have a turn for verse. I supply dry fact and you transform it into poetry. Let a few of your friends work for you and drop from some one committee—or will this have to wait till next year?"
"Next year!" Isabel smiled at her friend. "You are an institution here, Nita, no one would dream of breaking your work off, but mine, such as it is, comes this year to its natural end in an A. B. and next year I shall be disporting myself among—well, not Norse sea kings. My little sister is to come out with me, you know, and as mamma is not strong I believe my superior age and learning are to serve all but the formal needs of a chaperon."
"You a chaperon!" And Anita looked with amusement at her friend.
"I assure you I should make an excellent one. You mistake my character. It is almost portentously tempered with gravity. Will you race me from the church," she looked up at the deserted and lonely Church of the Good Shepherd they were then passing, "to the other, the cathedral?"—to St. Thomas of Villa Nova, she meant.
"Poor Mr. Clumsy-paws," Anita stopped panting, "he is far behind."
After the tired dog had caught up with them, looking reproachfully, they left behind the bleak church which lifts its golden crosses with uncompromising directness to the winter sky.
Through the fantastic snow twilight an hour later, they climbed the winding hill road to the college. Yellow lights shone steadily in ordered array—a few dark figures passed by somewhere—then a bell rang out suddenly and they hurried in. Yet before turning to the serious duty of preparing for dinner Anita let herself again be caught by her more alert friend idling at the window.
"Another problem, is it? in addition or subtraction?"
"Subtraction," she turned from the cool stars and rushing wind to the staid greeting of books and manuscript, "but what I am subtracting is, perhaps, no such loss after all—an unknown quantity, you see."