She still felt proud, though chilled and stiff, as she climbed out of the waggonette, and said good-bye to Mrs. Marshall Gurney.
When Delia Vaughan suggested, "I'm going your way. Shall we walk together?" she answered with indifference, as though she were accustomed to such offers.
"Well, and how do you like living at Marshington?" asked Delia as they left the yard.
"Very much, thank you," she answered primly.
"Good, what do you do with yourself all day?"
"I help my mother. We have been very busy with the Nursing Club lately. And I sew a good deal. And I study music and astronomy."
"Music and astronomy?" The vicar's daughter looked at her in genuine surprise. "How delightfully mediæval that sounds! But why astronomy? You can't study it in Marshington properly, can you? Do you mean it seriously? Are you going to college or somewhere?"
Muriel shook her head. "Oh, no. I could not go away. My mother and father need me at home. I just do a little reading on my own."
Delia looked wonderingly at her small, secret face. "Look here," she began, "you can't go on like that, you know. If you are really keen on a thing, and it's a good thing, you ought to go and do it. It is no use waiting till people tell you that you may go. Asking permission is a coward's way of shifting responsibility on to some one else. Reading at Marshington! It's only a sort of disguise for the futility of life here. I know. I've tried it."
She was warming up to her favourite topic. Her dark eyes glowed above the trailing boughs of beech. Muriel, unaccustomed to exhibitions of strong feeling, looked coldly at her.