In the twins' bedroom later that night, Elizabeth was crouched on the floor, taking her sister's measurements for the trousers she had so desperately wanted. "Are you sure you want me to make them? Because I'm not the best at sewing without a machine, and I'd have to be working all night to make these perfect for you," she asked Rebecca, looking up at her as she held the measuring tape around her sister's waist.

"It doesn't need to be perfect. I don't need an expert seamstress to make me a pair of pants. These are just to make a statement tomorrow. As long as they fit and don't look too shabby, they'll be perfect," Rebecca replied, her smile as bright as the evening star outside their window. The smog covered up all but the brightest stars over the city, and Rebecca's smile could have been mistaken for one of those visible ones.

"Alright, if you're sure," Elizabeth replied, measuring around her sister's thigh. "Wouldn't it be easier to just borrow a pair of Father's pants tomorrow?" she then suggested, thinking about it.

"Maybe, but he's also at least a solid foot taller than the both of us, so I'd end up ruining them when I wear them. Plus, he'd notice if a pair of his own were gone for a whole day, don't you think?" Rebecca shrugged slightly, her eyes trained on one of the pictures on the wall in front of her.

"Well, what about Bill's, or maybe Darcy's? Either of them would let you use a pair, I know they would. We could go and use the telephone in Father's office to call," Elizabeth pointed out as she moved to measuring the length of her sister's leg.

"Bill and Darcy may be kind enough to do that, but again, they're also too tall, almost as tall as Father. I need a pair of my own," Rebecca declared, standing straight up as she waited for her sister to finish.

"Alright, then, whatever you say," Elizabeth murmured and kept measuring. After another minute or two of silence and work, she spoke up again. "I think I've got all the measurements I need. You put on your nightgown so you look decent if Father comes in to say goodnight," Elizabeth ordered her sister, getting up from the floor and dusting her own nightgown off. "I'll be working on these at the window so I can get a little bit of natural light and you can sleep, okay?"

"You're too kind for your own good, Eliza," Rebecca told her sister, giving her a small smile. "Thanks, though."

"No problem," Elizabeth told her, smiling back as she gathered up the fabric and a pair of her father's pants that she had snuck out of the laundry to use as a guide. "Now put on your nightgown like I told you to."

"Okay, Mother," Rebecca mumbled and quickly changed into her nightgown before flopping down on her bed. "Good night," she called, reaching for the lamp between their beds to turn it off.

"Good night." The light was out, and Elizabeth was left in mostly darkness, but she was grateful that there was just enough light to make out what she was doing. She made some measurements on the fabric and cut the right shapes out to start stitching. "This is going to look terrible..." she mumbled under her breath, then started to stitch everything together. If she were using her mother's sewing machine, she could make these look fairly decent, but her mother would know that someone had been in there, and if she or anybody else in the family were to check on them in the middle of the night, she'd be caught and questioned. Better to just try and freehand them.

She could just picture it in her mind. It was going to look horrendous. The stitches would be off, there wouldn't be any pockets, the pants would just slide on...they wouldn't be anything like professionally-made pants. At least Rebecca said they didn't have to look pretty...

*****

Elizabeth was right. The pants were hideous, looking almost exactly how she had imagined them. Yet, Rebecca was so excited about them. She acted as if they were the best gift she had ever gotten, her smile even brighter than it had been the night before, if at all possible. She attempted to wear them out the door early in the morning, with Elizabeth by her side dressed like she always was. But, their father was up early that morning as well, and had caught them in the hall.

"Rebecca Josephine, just what do you think you're wearing?" he called down to her, his eyes lifting from the gold pocket watch he was holding in his hand. The older man towered over them, his eyes fixed on his misbehaving daughter with an unamused, disapproving glare. Rebecca was always the more difficult one in his eyes, mainly because when she misbehaved, her actions were more public. He hardly noticed when Elizabeth did anything wrong because she did her "rebellious" acts, if you could call much of what she did rebellious, in secrecy.

"Pants. That's what it looks like, right?" Rebecca retorted, her hands on her hips. Elizabeth held back a laugh as Rebecca smirked up at her father.

"Upstairs, now. You absolutely can not leave the house like that. Put on appropriate clothing, and then you may leave," he ordered, his eyes narrowing over his glasses as he stared down at them. Rebecca attempted to protest, but he cut her off. "Not a word. Upstairs, now. Elizabeth, wait in the library for her."

Rebecca, a frown on her face, ascended the stairs as she was ordered to, while Elizabeth silently entered the library. She immediately made her way over to the bookcase, looking through the shelves for a book to start while she waited. While she browsed the spines of the available novels, a maid entered the library and started to stoke a fire in the fireplace, confusing the seventeen year-old. It was summertime. Why was a fire necessary?

Within a few minutes of baking in the library, Elizabeth had her answer. Rebecca entered the library, dressed in a light green frock with a frown playing on her lips. Behind her, their father walked in with Elizabeth's hard work cradled in his hands. When he had both girls' attention, he walked over to the fire the maid had stoked and tossed the pants into the fire, allowing the fabric to become enveloped in flames. Elizabeth's eyes widened and she let out a squeak, but her father cut her off. "This will teach the both of you to do what is socially acceptable, understand?"

In unison, the girls responded, "Yes, Father." Their eyes were trained on their folded hands in front of them.

"Good. Now, go ahead and run along, meet with your friends. And I don't want to hear anything more about this kind of thing again, understand?"

"Yes, Father." And with that, the two girls left the library in silence and went outside. They didn't want to complain about what had happened until they were completely out of sight of their father.

Katherine was waiting for them outside their house after the debacle had finished, holding a notebook close to her chest. Surprisingly, she found that Elizabeth was a bit more upset than her sister. Though Elizabeth understood that they were simply awful, she worked hard, and it was a lot of work to make something she'd never made before in the dark like that.

"I was up until three in the morning working on those trousers for you, and they just were thrown in the fire. My half-asleep work didn't look terrible...especially considering that I've never made pants before in my life," Elizabeth complained.

"You can make me another pair when Father isn't around. We could make them at Katherine's, and sneak out using the fire escape instead of the front door," Rebecca suggested as they linked arms in the pattern they always were in, with Katherine in the center and the twins on either side.

"Not a bad idea, if you really want me to make you another pair in the first place." Elizabeth shrugged and smiled at her sister faintly, then spoke up again. "So, you still wanna go be a newsie for a day, or is that plan gone as well?"

"I definitely still want to do it, because why not? C'mon. Let's go to Newsie Square. You two can be my first customers for the day," Rebecca declared and all but dragged the girls in that direction.

"But I promised Crutchie I'd buy one of his," Elizabeth whined, following the two of them.

"We aren't broke, Eliza. You've got more than enough to pay for a paper from every newsie in Manhattan, probably. You can spare a little bit for your lovely sister and a little bit more for your new beau," Rebecca commented, giving her sister a wink as Katherine held in a small laugh.

"He's not my beau. You two are just...impossible." Elizabeth sighed and continued walking. The girls stayed at her side, weaving through other groups of people on the street in the morning.

"Oh, Kath! How was the vaudeville last night? Forgot to ask," Rebecca inquired, turning her head to question her friend.

"Well, the show was wonderful. The singing and dancing was great," Katherine replied, then sighed. "It would have been even better if that egomaniac hadn't shown up," she then grumbled.

"Egomaniac? Wait, did that newsie from yesterday go to the show?" Elizabeth asked, surprise clear on her face.

"Yes. He showed up in the press box, flirting with me again, and he almost got me kicked out when I told him to leave. I may have yelled a bit too loudly, but still," Katherine complained. Then, her gaze turned up towards the sky for a second, her lips forming a small, straight line before she continued to speak. "But, he left me a drawing when he left. It was honestly beautiful." Katherine seemed to be almost fighting herself, trying to figure out just what she thought about it all. Did she want to smile about the drawing, or did she want to keep loathing the newsie who left it for her?

"Do you have it with you? I'd like to see it," Elizabeth admitted, her big blue eyes full of curiosity.

"Yeah, it's right here," Katherine replied, pulling it out from its place in the back of her notebook. She hadn't wanted to fold it up the way she had, but she wanted to keep the image a secret from her father, and anybody else besides her best friends. After all, her father wasn't the biggest fan of anybody in that social class, so having a picture drawn by a newsie would definitely not be something Joseph Pulitzer approved of. She unfolded it and displayed it to her friends, who gaped at the skill.

"Katherine," Elizabeth started, getting her friend's attention, "this looks just like you. This drawing is incredible!"

"This guy's a newsie? He should be in art school. His work could...no, wait, should be in some art museum if the rest of it is anywhere as good as this," Rebecca stated, staring at the piece in awe.

"Maybe there's more to that flirt than what meets the eye," Elizabeth mused.

Katherine shrugged and folded the drawing back up. "Maybe there is more to this Jack Kelly–that's his name, by the way–than what meets the eye," she commented. "Not sure I want to know what all that is, but we'll see."

The conversation then turned to Rebecca, and Elizabeth smirked a little at her sister. "So, I haven't heard much about Daniel Phillips. What happened to him?" she asked.

"Daniel and his family moved to the Carolinas, remember? I haven't seen him since he moved," Rebecca replied, looking at her sister with some confusion on her face.

"Yes, well, I thought that you two were fairly close. I was just curious if you had gotten any letters from him, that's all," Elizabeth commented.

With a laugh at what she remembered, Katherine inquired, "Didn't your mother and his have a plan to have you two get married when you were around seven years old?"

"Yes, but that was when we were seven, and that was before Daniel met Winifred Collins, who actually had something in common with him, so they started stepping out together. I'm fine with it," Rebecca commented, shrugging. "As long as they're happy..."

Elizabeth nodded with a smile, then mused, "Absolutely. That's all that matters."

The other girls nodded, and they all continued chatting with one another until they reached the square, where the distribution sites were. On a normal day, they'd be completely devoid of papers, since the newsies would have come in and taken them all out to be sold. Today, however, stacks upon stacks of papers were still available, and a sign with the headline was crossed out with the word STRIKE written across it in forceful script, underlined for effect.

"Well, Rebecca, I don't think that you'll be selling papers today," Elizabeth commented, pointing out the board with a nod in its direction.

Rebecca sighed. "Well, that's just great. But what happened, anyway? Why are they striking?"

Katherine thought about it for a minute, feeling like she knew something, but she wasn't sure. "Well, I stopped by my father's house this morning for a quick visit before coming to get you two. While I was there, I think I heard my father on the phone talking about profit increases for the paper. Maybe he changed something and it hurt the newsies somehow, like raising the price of the papers to make more money," she thought. "Or maybe he made some changes to how selling happens to make more profit. I don't know."

"Paper prices seems most likely," Elizabeth commented with a frown. "But that's horrible. These boys live off the money they earn from selling papers. Raising prices could kill them."

"I hope that's not the case, but what else could it be?" Katherine commented, a frown on her face. Then, her expression changed, and her eyes lit up as she came up with a brilliant idea.

"Oh, no. What happened?" Rebecca inquired, looking at her friend with a curious expression.

"I think our star reporter has an idea..." Elizabeth informed her twin, smiling a bit.

"You're right about that. Let's go," Katherine told the girls, pulling them down the street at a rapid pace.

"Katherine, slow down. At least tell us what the idea is," Rebecca pleaded, trying not to trip in the process of following her.

"I'm getting off the social pages with the story of the year, that's what." Katherine's lips curled into a smile. With that, she let go of her friends' arms and sprinted down the street towards the big break she'd been waiting for.