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.

But on the fourth mornin