"Oh, that's all right. You needn't try to talk me over. A body'd think there was nothing in the world but ugly old newspapers. I don't like 'em, anyhow. I think they're downright nosey! And we'll never be the same any more, Larkie, and you're the only twin I've got, and—"
Carol's defiance ended in a poorly suppressed sob and a rush of tears.
Lark threw her gloves on the table.
"I won't go at all," she said. "I won't go a step. If—if you think for a minute, Carol, that any silly old Career is going to be any dearer to me than you are, and if we aren't going to be just as we've always been, I won't go a step."
Carol wiped her eyes. "Well," she said very affectionately, "if you feel like that, it's all right. I just wanted you to say you liked me better than anything else. Of course you must go, Lark. I really take all the credit for you and your talent to myself, and it's as much an honor for me as it is for you, and I want you to go. But don't you ever go to liking the crazy old stories any better than you do me."
Then she picked up Lark's gloves, and the two went out with an arm around each other's waist.
It was a dreary morning for Carol, but none of her sisters knew that most of it was spent in the closet of her room, sobbing bitterly. "It's just the way of the world," she mourned, in the tone of one who has lived many years and suffered untold anguish, "we spend our lives bringing them up, and loving them, and finding all our joy and happiness in them, and then they go, and we are left alone."
Lark's morning at the office was quiet, but none the less thrilling on that account. Mr. Raider received her cordially, and with a great deal of unctuous fatherly advice. He took her into his office, which was one corner of the press room glassed in by itself, and talked over her duties, which, as far as Lark could gather from his discourse, appeared to consist in doing as she was told.
"Now, remember," he said, in part, "that running a newspaper is business. Pure business. We've got to give folks what they want to hear, and they want to hear everything that happens. Of course, it will hurt some people, it is not pleasant to have private affairs aired in public papers, but that's the newspaper job. Folks want to hear about the private affairs of other folks. They pay us to find out, and tell them, and it's our duty to do it. So don't ever be squeamish about coming right out blunt with the plain facts; that's what we are paid for."
This did not seriously impress Lark. Theoretically, she realized that he was right. And he talked so impressively of THE PRESS, and its mission in the world, and its rights and its pride and its power, that Lark, looking away with hope-filled eyes, saw a high and mighty figure, immense, all-powerful, standing free, majestic, beckoning her to come. It was her first view of the world's PRESS.