The pay might not be able to compete with the prices paid for more popular journalism, but it would afford a foundation, and give to Joan that opportunity for influence which was her main ambition.
Joan expressed her thanks.

She would like to have had more talk with the stern old lady, but was prevented by the entrance of two new comers.

The first was Miss Lavery, a handsome, loud-toned young woman.

She ran a nursing paper, but her chief interest was in the woman's suffrage question, just then coming rapidly to the front.

She had heard Joan speak at Cambridge and was eager to secure her adherence, being wishful to surround herself with a group of young and good-looking women who should take the movement out of the hands of the "frumps," as she termed them.