“Do,” urged Mrs. Estabrook; “and tell her we want her mother and herself to come to tea to-morrow evening.”
“Oh, grandma, that’s good of you to give me a message. I left in a huff, and I know Annis is mourning over it. The message makes a nice excuse to go back without hurting my dignity.” And Persis was out of the room like a flash, and in half an hour she and Annis were building air-castles with all the fervor imaginable.
“We’ll always work together,” Annis declared, “for you know, Persis, I don’t want to marry and leave mamma, so we can do something fine. We might teach in the same college, or we might edit a paper together.”
“I shall not marry, either,” responded Persis. “Lisa and Mellicent will be sure to,—they are so pretty,—and I shall want to give the family a change of experience. I think I would like the editing best. You see papa represents the college professor sufficiently, and I’d like to be something quite different. Let us decide to be editors. What kind of a paper shall it be,—purely literary, or just general?”
“We might begin with a juvenile magazine; that would be nice,” replied Annis, whose limitations rather daunted her when something “purely literary” was considered.
“Well,” returned Persis, “that might do, only I’d like something rather more ambitious.”
“But we’ll have to know such a lot to edit a grown-up paper.”
“Oh, we’d not need to do it till we were prepared. We’ll study for a journalistic career. I think it will be fine for you to be literary editor and for me to be managing editor.”
“I can imagine how fierce you’d look when any one came in with a complaint,” laughed Annis. “Won’t it be funny to know all about printers’ devils and forms and proofs and all those things?”
“Where shall we start it?” said Persis, as if it were a matter to be determined at once. “Shall we have our office here?”