автордың кітабын онлайн тегін оқу  Little Women

Louisa May Alcott

“Go then, my lit­tle Book, and show to all
That en­ter­tain and bid thee wel­come shall,
What thou dost keep close shut up in thy breast;
And wish what thou dost show them may be blest
To them for good, may make them choose to be
Pil­grims bet­ter, by far, than thee or me.
Tell them of Mercy; she is one
Who early hath her pil­grim­age be­gun.
Yea, let young damsels learn of her to prize
The world which is to come, and so be wise;
For lit­tle trip­ping maids may fol­low God
Along the ways which saintly feet have trod.”

Adapted from John Bun­yan

Part I

I Playing Pilgrims

“Christ­mas won’t be Christ­mas with­out any presents,” grum­bled Jo, ly­ing on the rug.

“It’s so dread­ful to be poor!” sighed Meg, look­ing down at her old dress.

“I don’t think it’s fair for some girls to have plenty of pretty things, and other girls noth­ing at all,” added lit­tle Amy, with an in­jured sniff.

“We’ve got fa­ther and mother and each other,” said Beth con­tent­edly, from her cor­ner.

The four young faces on which the fire­light shone bright­ened at the cheer­ful words, but dark­ened again as Jo said sadly—

“We haven’t got fa­ther, and shall not have him for a long time.” She didn’t say “per­haps never,” but each silently added it, think­ing of fa­ther far away, where the fight­ing was.

No­body spoke for a minute; then Meg said in an al­tered tone—

“You know the rea­son mother pro­posed not hav­ing any presents this Christ­mas was be­cause it is go­ing to be a hard win­ter for ev­ery­one; and she thinks we ought not to spend money for plea­sure, when our men are suf­fer­ing so in the army. We can’t do much, but we can make our lit­tle sac­ri­fices, and ought to do it gladly. But I am afraid I don’t;” and Meg shook her head, as she thought re­gret­fully of all the pretty things she wanted.

“But I don’t think the lit­tle we should spend would do any good. We’ve each got a dol­lar, and the army wouldn’t be much helped by our giv­ing that. I agree not to ex­pect any­thing from mother or you, but I do want to buy Un­dine and Sin­tram for my­self; I’ve wanted it so long,” said Jo, who was a book­worm.

“I planned to spend mine in new mu­sic,” said Beth, with a lit­tle sigh, which no one heard but the hearth-brush and ket­tle-holder.

“I shall get a nice box of Faber’s draw­ing-pen­cils; I re­ally need them,” said Amy de­cid­edly.

“Mother didn’t say any­thing about our money, and she won’t wish us to give up ev­ery­thing. Let’s each buy what we want, and have a lit­tle fun; I’m sure we work hard enough to earn it,” cried Jo, ex­am­in­ing the heels of her shoes in a gen­tle­manly man­ner.

“I know I do—teach­ing those tire­some chil­dren nearly all day, when I’m long­ing to en­joy my­self at home,” be­gan Meg, in the com­plain­ing tone again.

“You don’t have half such a hard time as I do,” said Jo. “How would you like to be shut up for hours with a ner­vous, fussy old lady, who keeps you trot­ting, is never sat­is­fied, and wor­ries you till you’re ready to fly out of the win­dow or cry?”

“It’s naughty to fret; but I do think wash­ing dishes and keep­ing things tidy is the worst work in the world. It makes me cross; and my hands get so stiff, I can’t prac­tise well at all;” and Beth looked at her rough hands with a sigh that any­one could hear that time.

“I don’t be­lieve any of you suf­fer as I do,” cried Amy; “for you don’t have to go to school with im­per­ti­nent girls, who plague you if you don’t know your lessons, and laugh at your dresses, and la­bel your fa­ther if he isn’t rich, and in­sult you when your nose isn’t nice.”

“If you mean li­bel, I’d say so, and not talk about la­bels, as if papa was a pickle-bot­tle,” ad­vised Jo, laugh­ing.

“I know what I mean, and you needn’t be statir­i­cal about it. It’s proper to use good words, and im­prove your vo­ca­bi­lary,” re­turned Amy, with dig­nity.

“Don’t peck at one an­other, chil­dren. Don’t you wish we had the money papa lost when we were lit­tle, Jo? Dear me! how happy and good we’d be, if we had no wor­ries!” said Meg, who could re­mem­ber bet­ter times.

“You said the other day, you thought we were a deal hap­pier than the King chil­dren, for they were fight­ing and fret­ting all the time, in spite of their money.”

“So I did, Beth. Well, I think we are; for, though we do have to work, we make fun for our­selves, and are a pretty jolly set, as Jo would say.”

“Jo does use such slang words!” ob­served Amy, with a re­prov­ing look at the long fig­ure stretched on the rug. Jo im­me­di­ately sat up, put her hands in her pock­ets, and be­gan to whis­tle.

“Don’t, Jo; it’s so boy­ish!”

“That’s why I do it.”

“I de­test rude, un­la­dy­like girls!”

“I hate af­fected, niminy-piminy chits!”

“ ‘Birds in their lit­tle nests agree,’ ” sang Beth, the peace­maker, with such a funny face that both sharp voices soft­ened to a laugh, and the “peck­ing” ended for that time.

“Really, girls, you are both to be blamed,” said Meg, be­gin­ning to lec­ture in her el­der-sis­terly fash­ion. “You are old enough to leave off boy­ish tricks, and to be­have bet­ter, Josephine. It didn’t mat­ter so much when you were a lit­tle girl; but now you are so tall, and turn up your hair, you should re­mem­ber that you are a young lady.”

“I’m not! and if turn­ing up my hair makes me one, I’ll wear it in two tails till I’m twenty,” cried Jo, pulling off her net, and shak­ing down a chest­nut mane. “I hate to think I’ve got to grow up, and be Miss March, and wear long gowns, and look as prim as a China-aster! It’s bad enough to be a girl, any­way, when I like boys’ games and work and man­ners! I can’t get over my dis­ap­point­ment in not be­ing a boy; and it’s worse than ever now, for I’m dy­ing to go and fight with papa, and I can only stay at home and knit, like a poky old woman!” And Jo shook the blue army-sock till the nee­dles rat­tled like cas­tanets, and her ball bounded across the room.

“Poor Jo! It’s too bad, but it can’t be helped; so you must try to be con­tented with mak­ing your name boy­ish, and play­ing brother to us girls,” said Beth, stroking the rough head at her knee with a hand that all the dish-wash­ing and dust­ing in the world could not make un­gen­tle in its touch.

“As for you, Amy,” con­tin­ued Meg, “you are al­to­gether too par­tic­u­lar and prim. Your airs are funny now; but you’ll grow up an af­fected lit­tle goose, if you don’t take care. I like your nice man­ners and re­fined ways of speak­ing, when you don’t try to be el­e­gant; but your ab­surd words are as bad as Jo’s slang.”

“If Jo is a tomboy and Amy a goose, what am I, please?” asked Beth, ready to share the lec­ture.

“You’re a dear, and noth­ing else,” an­swered Meg warmly; and no one con­tra­dicted her, for the “Mouse” was the pet of the fam­ily.

As young read­ers like to know “how peo­ple look,” we will take this mo­ment to give them a lit­tle sketch of the four sis­ters, who sat knit­ting away in the twi­light, while the De­cem­ber snow fell qui­etly with­out, and the fire crack­led cheer­fully within. It was a com­fort­able old room, though the car­pet was faded and the fur­ni­ture very plain; for a good pic­ture or two hung on the walls, books filled the re­cesses, chrysan­the­mums and Christ­mas roses bloomed in the win­dows, and a pleas­ant at­mos­phere of home-peace per­vaded it.

Mar­garet, the el­dest of the four, was six­teen, and very pretty, be­ing plump and fair, with large eyes, plenty of soft, brown hair, a sweet mouth, and white hands, of which she was rather vain. Fif­teen-year-old Jo was very tall, thin, and brown, and re­minded one of a colt; for she never seemed to know what to do with her long limbs, which were very much in her way. She had a de­cided mouth, a com­i­cal nose, and sharp, gray eyes, which ap­peared to see ev­ery­thing, and were by turns fierce, funny, or thought­ful. Her long, thick hair was her one beauty; but it was usu­ally bun­dled into a net, to be out of her way. Round shoul­ders had Jo, big hands and feet, a fly­away look to her clothes, and the un­com­fort­able ap­pear­ance of a girl who was rapidly shoot­ing up into a woman, and didn’t like it. El­iz­a­beth—or Beth, as ev­ery­one called her—was a rosy, smooth-haired, bright-eyed girl of thir­teen, with a shy man­ner, a timid voice, and a peace­ful ex­pres­sion, which was sel­dom dis­turbed. Her fa­ther called her “Lit­tle Tran­quil­lity,” and the name suited her ex­cel­lently; for she seemed to live in a happy world of her own, only ven­tur­ing out to meet the few whom she trusted and loved. Amy, though the youngest, was a most im­por­tant per­son—in her own opin­ion at least. A reg­u­lar snow-maiden, with blue eyes, and yel­low hair, curl­ing on her shoul­ders, pale and slen­der, and al­ways car­ry­ing her­self like a young lady mind­ful of her man­ners. What the char­ac­ters of the four sis­ters were we will leave to be found out.

The clock struck six; and, hav­ing swept up the hearth, Beth put a pair of slip­pers down to warm. Some­how the sight of the old shoes had a good ef­fect upon the girls; for mother was com­ing, and ev­ery­one bright­ened to wel­come her. Meg stopped lec­tur­ing, and lighted the lamp, Amy got out of the easy-chair with­out be­ing asked, and Jo for­got how tired she was as she sat up to hold the slip­pers nearer to the blaze.

“They are quite worn out; Marmee must have a new pair.”

“I thought I’d get her some with my dol­lar,” said Beth.

“No, I shall!” cried Amy.

“I’m the old­est,” be­gan Meg, but Jo cut in with a de­cided—

“I’m the man of the fam­ily now papa is away, and I shall pro­vide the slip­pers, for he told me to take spe­cial care of mother while he was gone.”

“I’ll tell you what we’ll do,” said Beth; “let’s each get her some­thing for Christ­mas, and not get any­thing for our­selves.”

“That’s like you, dear! What will we get?” ex­claimed Jo.

Every­one thought soberly for a minute; then Meg an­nounced, as if the idea was sug­gested by the sight of her own pretty hands, “I shall give her a nice pair of gloves.”

“Army shoes, best to be had,” cried Jo.

“Some hand­ker­chiefs, all hemmed,” said Beth.

“I’ll get a lit­tle bot­tle of cologne; she likes it, and it won’t cost much, so I’ll have some left to buy my pen­cils,” added Amy.

“How will we give the things?” asked Meg.

“Put them on the ta­ble, and bring her in and see her open the bun­dles. Don’t you re­mem­ber how we used to do on our birth­days?” an­swered Jo.

“I used to be so fright­ened when it was my turn to sit in the big chair with the crown on, and see you all come march­ing round to give the presents, with a kiss. I liked the things and the kisses, but it was dread­ful to have you sit look­ing at me while I opened the bun­dles,” said Beth, who was toast­ing her face and the bread for tea, at the same time.

“Let Marmee think we are get­ting things for our­selves, and then sur­prise her. We must go shop­ping to­mor­row af­ter­noon, Meg; there is so much to do about the play for Christ­mas night,” said Jo, march­ing up and down, with her hands be­hind her back and her nose in the air.

“I don’t mean to act any more af­ter this time; I’m get­ting too old for such things,” ob­served Meg, who was as much a child as ever about “dress­ing-up” frol­ics.

“You won’t stop, I know, as long as you can trail round in a white gown with your hair down, and wear gold-pa­per jew­elry. You are the best ac­tress we’ve got, and there’ll be an end of ev­ery­thing if you quit the boards,” said Jo. “We ought to re­hearse tonight. Come here, Amy, and do the faint­ing scene, for you are as stiff as a poker in that.”

“I can’t help it; I never saw any­one faint, and I don’t choose to make my­self all black and blue, tum­bling flat as you do. If I can go down eas­ily, I’ll drop; if I can’t, I shall fall into a chair and be grace­ful; I don’t care if Hugo does come at me with a pis­tol,” re­turned Amy, who was not gifted with dra­matic power, but was cho­sen be­cause she was small enough to be borne out shriek­ing by the vil­lain of the piece.

“Do it this way; clasp your hands so, and stag­ger across the room, cry­ing fran­ti­cally, ‘Roderigo! save me! save me!’ ” and away went Jo, with a melo­dra­matic scream which was truly thrilling.

Amy fol­lowed, but she poked her hands out stiffly be­fore her, and jerked her­self along as if she went by ma­chin­ery; and her “Ow!” was more sug­ges­tive of pins be­ing run into her than of fear and an­guish. Jo gave a de­spair­ing groan, and Meg laughed out­right, while Beth let her bread burn as she watched the fun, with in­ter­est.

“It’s no use! Do the best you can when the time comes, and if the au­di­ence laugh, don’t blame me. Come on, Meg.”

Then things went smoothly, for Don Pe­dro de­fied the world in a speech of two pages with­out a sin­gle break; Ha­gar, the witch, chanted an aw­ful in­can­ta­tion over her ket­tle­ful of sim­mer­ing toads, with weird ef­fect; Roderigo rent his chains asun­der man­fully, and Hugo died in ag­o­nies of re­morse and ar­senic, with a wild “Ha! ha!”

“It’s the best we’ve had yet,” said Meg, as the dead vil­lain sat up and rubbed his el­bows.

“I don’t see how you can write and act such splen­did things, Jo. You’re a reg­u­lar Shake­speare!” ex­claimed Beth, who firmly be­lieved that her sis­ters were gifted with won­der­ful ge­nius in all things.

“Not quite,” replied Jo mod­estly. “I do think The Witch’s Curse, an Oper­atic Tragedy, is rather a nice thing; but I’d like to try Mac­beth, if we only had a trap-door for Ban­quo. I al­ways wanted to do the killing part. ‘Is that a dag­ger that I see be­fore me?’ ” mut­tered Jo, rolling her eyes and clutch­ing at the air, as she had seen a fa­mous trage­dian do.

“No, it’s the toast­ing fork, with mother’s shoe on it in­stead of the bread. Beth’s stage-struck!” cried Meg, and the re­hearsal ended in a gen­eral burst of laugh­ter.

“Glad to find you so merry, my girls,” said a cheery voice at the door, and ac­tors and au­di­ence turned to wel­come a tall, moth­erly lady, with a “can-I-help-you” look about her which was truly de­light­ful. She was not el­e­gantly dressed, but a no­ble-look­ing woman, and the girls thought the gray cloak and un­fash­ion­able bon­net cov­ered the most splen­did mother in the world.

“Well, dearies, how have you got on to­day? There was so much to do, get­ting the boxes ready to go to­mor­row, that I didn’t come home to din­ner. Has any­one called, Beth? How is your cold, Meg? Jo, you look tired to death. Come and kiss me, baby.”

While mak­ing these ma­ter­nal in­quiries Mrs. March got her wet things off, her warm slip­pers on, and sit­ting down in the easy-chair, drew Amy to her lap, pre­par­ing to en­joy the hap­pi­est hour of her busy day. The girls flew about, try­ing to make things com­fort­able, each in her own way. Meg ar­ranged the tea-ta­ble; Jo brought wood and set chairs, drop­ping, over­turn­ing, and clat­ter­ing ev­ery­thing she touched; Beth trot­ted to and fro be­tween par­lor and kitchen, quiet and busy; while Amy gave di­rec­tions to ev­ery­one, as she sat with her hands folded.

As they gath­ered about the ta­ble, Mrs. March said, with a par­tic­u­larly happy face, “I’ve got a treat for you af­ter sup­per.”

A quick, bright smile went round like a streak of sun­shine. Beth clapped her hands, re­gard­less of the bis­cuit she held, and Jo tossed up her nap­kin, cry­ing, “A let­ter! a let­ter! Three cheers for fa­ther!”

“Yes, a nice long let­ter. He is well, and thinks he shall get through the cold sea­son bet­ter than we feared. He sends all sorts of lov­ing wishes for Christ­mas, and an es­pe­cial mes­sage to you girls,” said Mrs. March, pat­ting her pocket as if she had got a trea­sure there.

“Hurry and get done! Don’t stop to quirk your lit­tle fin­ger, and sim­per over your plate, Amy,” cried Jo, chok­ing in her tea, and drop­ping her bread, but­ter side down, on the car­pet, in her haste to get at the treat.

Beth ate no more, but crept away, to sit in her shad­owy cor­ner and brood over the de­light to come, till the oth­ers were ready.

“I think it was so splen­did in fa­ther to go as a chap­lain when he was too old to be drafted, and not strong enough for a sol­dier,” said Meg warmly.

“Don’t I wish I could go as a drum­mer, a vi­van—what’s its name? or a nurse, so I could be near him and help him,” ex­claimed Jo, with a groan.

“It must be very dis­agree­able to sleep in a tent, and eat all sorts of bad-tast­ing things, and drink out of a tin mug,” sighed Amy.

“When will he come home, Marmee?” asked Beth, with a lit­tle quiver in her voice.

“Not for many months, dear, un­less he is sick. He will stay and do his work faith­fully as long as he can, and we won’t ask for him back a minute sooner than he can be spared. Now come and hear the let­ter.”

They all drew to the fire, mother in the big chair with Beth at her feet, Meg and Amy perched on ei­ther arm of the chair, and Jo lean­ing on the back, where no one would see any sign of emo­tion if the let­ter should hap­pen to be touch­ing.

Very few let­ters were writ­ten in those hard times that were not touch­ing, es­pe­cially those which fa­thers sent home. In this one lit­tle was said of the hard­ships en­dured, the dan­gers faced, or the home­sick­ness con­quered; it was a cheer­ful, hope­ful let­ter, full of lively de­scrip­tions of camp life, marches, and mil­i­tary news; and only at the end did the writer’s heart over­flow with fa­therly love and long­ing for the lit­tle girls at home.

“Give them all my dear love and a kiss. Tell them I think of them by day, pray for them by night, and find my best com­fort in their af­fec­tion at all times. A year seems very long to wait be­fore I see them, but re­mind them that while we wait we may all work, so that these hard days need not be wasted. I know they will re­mem­ber all I said to them, that they will be lov­ing chil­dren to you, will do their duty faith­fully, fight their bo­som en­e­mies bravely, and con­quer them­selves so beau­ti­fully, that when I come back to them I may be fonder and prouder than ever of my lit­tle women.”

Every­body sniffed when they came to that part; Jo wasn’t ashamed of the great tear that dropped off the end of her nose, and Amy never minded the rum­pling of her curls as she hid her face on her mother’s shoul­der and sobbed out, “I am a self­ish girl! but I’ll truly try to be bet­ter, so he mayn’t be dis­ap­pointed in me by and by.”

“We all will!” cried Meg. “I think too much of my looks, and hate to work, but won’t any more, if I can help it.”

“I’ll try and be what he loves to call me, ‘a lit­tle woman,’ and not be rough and wild; but do my duty here in­stead of want­ing to be some­where else,” said Jo, think­ing that keep­ing her tem­per at home was a much harder task than fac­ing a rebel or two down South.

Beth said noth­ing, but wiped away her tears with the blue army-sock, and be­gan to knit with all her might, los­ing no time in do­ing the duty that lay near­est her, while she re­solved in her quiet lit­tle soul to be all that fa­ther hoped to find her when the year brought round the happy com­ing home.

Mrs. March broke the si­lence that fol­lowed Jo’s words, by say­ing in her cheery voice, “Do you re­mem­ber how you used to play ‘Pil­grim’s Progress’ when you were lit­tle things? Noth­ing de­lighted you more than to have me tie my piece-bags on your backs for bur­dens, give you hats and sticks and rolls of pa­per, and let you travel through the house from the cel­lar, which was the City of Destruc­tion, up, up, to the house­top, where you had all the lovely things you could col­lect to make a Ce­les­tial City.”

“What fun it was, es­pe­cially go­ing by the li­ons, fight­ing Apol­lyon, and pass­ing through the Val­ley where the hob­gob­lins were!” said Jo.

“I liked the place where the bun­dles fell off and tum­bled down stairs,” said Meg.

“My fa­vorite part was when we came out on the flat roof where our flow­ers and ar­bors and pretty things were, and all stood and sung for joy up there in the sun­shine,” said Beth, smil­ing, as if that pleas­ant mo­ment had come back to her.

“I don’t re­mem­ber much about it, ex­cept that I was afraid of the cel­lar and the dark en­try, and al­ways liked the cake and milk we had up at the top. If I wasn’t too old for such things, I’d rather like to play it over again,” said Amy, who be­gan to talk of re­nounc­ing child­ish things at the ma­ture age of twelve.

“We never are too old for this, my dear, be­cause it is a play we are play­ing all the time in one way or an­other. Our bur­dens are here, our road is be­fore us, and the long­ing for good­ness and hap­pi­ness is the guide that leads us through many trou­bles and mis­takes to the peace which is a true Ce­les­tial City. Now, my lit­tle pil­grims, sup­pose you be­gin again, not in play, but in earnest, and see how far on you can get be­fore fa­ther comes home.”

“Really, mother? Where are our bun­dles?” asked Amy, who was a very lit­eral young lady.

“Each of you told what your bur­den was just now, ex­cept Beth; I rather think she hasn’t got any,” said her mother.

“Yes, I have; mine is dishes and dusters, and en­vy­ing girls with nice pi­anos, and be­ing afraid of peo­ple.”

Beth’s bun­dle was such a funny one that ev­ery­body wanted to laugh; but no­body did, for it would have hurt her feel­ings very much.

“Let us do it,” said Meg thought­fully. “It is only an­other name for try­ing to be good, and the story may help us; for though we do want to be good, it’s hard work, and we for­get, and don’t do our best.”

“We were in the Slough of De­spond tonight, and mother came and pulled us out as Help did in the book. We ought to have our roll of di­rec­tions, like Chris­tian. What shall we do about that?” asked Jo, de­lighted with the fancy which lent a lit­tle ro­mance to the very dull task of do­ing her duty.

“Look un­der your pil­lows, Christ­mas morn­ing, and you will find your guide­book,” replied Mrs. March.

They talked over the new plan while old Han­nah cleared the ta­ble; then out came the four lit­tle work­bas­kets, and the nee­dles flew as the girls made sheets for Aunt March. It was un­in­ter­est­ing sewing, but tonight no one grum­bled. They adopted Jo’s plan of di­vid­ing the long seams into four parts, and call­ing the quar­ters Europe, Asia, Africa, and Amer­ica, and in that way got on cap­i­tally, es­pe­cially when they talked about the dif­fer­ent coun­tries as they stitched their way through them.

At nine they stopped work, and sung, as usual, be­fore they went to bed. No one but Beth could get much mu­sic out of the old pi­ano; but she had a way of softly touch­ing the yel­low keys, and mak­ing a pleas­ant ac­com­pa­ni­ment to the sim­ple songs they sung. Meg had a voice like a flute, and she and her mother led the lit­tle choir. Amy chirped like a cricket, and Jo wan­dered through the airs at her own sweet will, al­ways com­ing out at the wrong place with a croak or a qua­ver that spoilt the most pen­sive tune. They had al­ways done this from the time they could lisp

“Crin­kle, crin­kle, ’it­tle ’tar,”

and it had be­come a house­hold cus­tom, for the mother was a born singer. The first sound in the morn­ing was her voice, as she went about the house singing like a lark; and the last sound at night was the same cheery sound, for the girls never grew too old for that fa­mil­iar lul­laby.

II A Merry Christmas

Jo was the first to wake in the gray dawn of Christ­mas morn­ing. No stock­ings hung at the fire­place, and for a mo­ment she felt as much dis­ap­pointed as she did long ago, when her lit­tle sock fell down be­cause it was so crammed with good­ies. Then she re­mem­bered her mother’s prom­ise, and, slip­ping her hand un­der her pil­low, drew out a lit­tle crim­son-cov­ered book. She knew it very well, for it was that beau­ti­ful old story of the best life ever lived, and Jo felt that it was a true guide­book for any pil­grim go­ing the long jour­ney. She woke Meg with a “Merry Christ­mas,” and bade her see what was un­der her pil­low. A green-cov­ered book ap­peared, with the same pic­ture in­side, and a few words writ­ten by their mother, which made their one present very pre­cious in their eyes. Presently Beth and Amy woke, to rum­mage and find their lit­tle books also—one dove-col­ored, the other blue; and all sat look­ing at and talk­ing about them, while the east grew rosy with the com­ing day.

In spite of her small van­i­ties, Mar­garet had a sweet and pi­ous na­ture, which un­con­sciously in­flu­enced her sis­ters, es­pe­cially Jo, who loved her very ten­derly, and obeyed her be­cause her ad­vice was so gen­tly given.

“Girls,” said Meg se­ri­ously, look­ing from the tum­bled head be­side her to the two lit­tle night-capped ones in the room be­yond, “mother wants us to read and love and mind these books, and we must be­gin at once. We used to be faith­ful about it; but since fa­ther went away, and all this war trou­ble un­set­tled us, we have ne­glected many things. You can do as you please; but I shall keep my book on the ta­ble here, and read a lit­tle ev­ery morn­ing as soon as I wake, for I know it will do me good, and help me through the day.”

Then she opened her new book and be­gan to read. Jo put her arm round her, and, lean­ing cheek to cheek, read also, with the quiet ex­pres­sion so sel­dom seen on her rest­less face.

“How good Meg is! Come, Amy, let’s do as they do. I’ll help you with the hard words, and they’ll ex­plain things if we don’t un­der­stand,” whis­pered Beth, very much im­pressed by the pretty books and her sis­ters’ ex­am­ple.

“I’m glad mine is blue,” said Amy; and then the rooms were very still while the pages were softly turned, and the win­ter sun­shine crept in to touch the bright heads and se­ri­ous faces with a Christ­mas greet­ing.

“Where is mother?” asked Meg, as she and Jo ran down to thank her for their gifts, half an hour later.

“Good­ness only knows. Some poor creeter come a-beg­gin’, and your ma went straight off to see what was needed. There never was such a woman for givin’ away vit­tles and drink, clothes and firin’,” replied Han­nah, who had lived with the fam­ily since Meg was born, and was con­sid­ered by them all more as a friend than a ser­vant.

“She will be back soon, I think; so fry your cakes, and have ev­ery­thing ready,” said Meg, look­ing over the presents which were col­lected in a bas­ket and kept un­der the sofa, ready to be pro­duced at the proper time. “Why, where is Amy’s bot­tle of cologne?” she added, as the lit­tle flask did not ap­pear.

“She took it out a minute ago, and went off with it to put a rib­bon on it, or some such no­tion,” replied Jo, danc­ing about the room to take the first stiff­ness off the new army-slip­pers.

“How nice my hand­ker­chiefs look, don’t they? Han­nah washed and ironed them for me, and I marked them all my­self,” said Beth, look­ing proudly at the some­what un­even let­ters which had cost her such la­bor.

“Bless the child! she’s gone and put ‘Mother’ on them in­stead of ‘M. March.’ How funny!” cried Jo, tak­ing up one.

“Isn’t it right? I thought it was bet­ter to do it so, be­cause Meg’s ini­tials are ‘M. M.,’ and I don’t want any­one to use these but Marmee,” said Beth, look­ing trou­bled.

“It’s all right, dear, and a very pretty idea—quite sen­si­ble, too, for no one can ever mis­take now. It will please her very much, I know,” said Meg, with a frown for Jo and a smile for Beth.

“There’s mother. Hide the bas­ket, quick!” cried Jo, as a door slammed, and steps sounded in the hall.

Amy came in hastily, and looked rather abashed when she saw her sis­ters all wait­ing for her.

“Where have you been, and what are you hid­ing be­hind you?” asked Meg, sur­prised to see, by her hood and cloak, that lazy Amy had been out so early.

“Don’t laugh at me, Jo! I didn’t mean any­one should know till the time came. I only meant to change the lit­tle bot­tle for a big one, and I gave all my money to get it, and I’m truly try­ing not to be self­ish any more.”

As she spoke, Amy showed the hand­some flask which re­placed the cheap one; and looked so earnest and hum­ble in her lit­tle ef­fort to for­get her­self that Meg hugged her on the spot, and Jo pro­nounced her “a trump,” while Beth ran to the win­dow, and picked her finest rose to or­na­ment the stately bot­tle.

“You see I felt ashamed of my present, af­ter read­ing and talk­ing about be­ing good this morn­ing, so I ran round the cor­ner and changed it the minute I was up: and I’m so glad, for mine is the hand­somest now.”

Another bang of the street-door sent the bas­ket un­der the sofa, and the girls to the ta­ble, ea­ger for break­fast.

“Merry Christ­mas, Marmee! Many of them! Thank you for our books; we read some, and mean to ev­ery day,” they cried, in cho­rus.

“Merry Christ­mas, lit­tle daugh­ters! I’m glad you be­gan at once, and hope you will keep on. But I want to say one word be­fore we sit down. Not far away from here lies a poor woman with a lit­tle new­born baby. Six chil­dren are hud­dled into one bed to keep from freez­ing, for they have no fire. There is noth­ing to eat over there; and the old­est boy came to tell me they were suf­fer­ing hunger and cold. My girls, will you give them your break­fast as a Christ­mas present?”

They were all un­usu­ally hun­gry, hav­ing waited nearly an hour, and for a minute no one spoke; only a minute, for Jo ex­claimed im­petu­ously—

“I’m so glad you came be­fore we be­gan!”

“May I go and help carry the things to the poor lit­tle chil­dren?” asked Beth, ea­gerly.

“I shall take the cream and the muffins,” added Amy, hero­ically giv­ing up the ar­ti­cles she most liked.

Meg was al­ready cov­er­ing the buck­wheats, and pil­ing the bread into one big plate.

“I thought you’d do it,” said Mrs. March, smil­ing as if sat­is­fied. “You shall all go and help me, and when we come back we will have bread and milk for break­fast, and make it up at din­ner­time.”

They were soon ready, and the pro­ces­sion set out. For­tu­nately it was early, and they went through back streets, so few peo­ple saw them, and no one laughed at the queer party.

A poor, bare, mis­er­able room it was, with bro­ken win­dows, no fire, ragged bed­clothes, a sick mother, wail­ing baby, and a group of pale, hun­gry chil­dren cud­dled un­der one old quilt, try­ing to keep warm.

How the big eyes stared and the blue lips smiled as the girls went in!

“Ach, mein Gott! it is good an­gels come to us!” said the poor woman, cry­ing for joy.

“Funny an­gels in hoods and mit­tens,” said Jo, and set them laugh­ing.

In a few min­utes it re­ally did seem as if kind spir­its had been at work there. Han­nah, who had car­ried wood, made a fire, and stopped up the bro­ken panes with old hats and her own cloak. Mrs. March gave the mother tea and gruel, and com­forted her with prom­ises of help, while she dressed the lit­tle baby as ten­derly as if it had been her own. The girls, mean­time, spread the ta­ble, set the chil­dren round the fire, and fed them like so many hun­gry birds—laugh­ing, talk­ing, and try­ing to un­der­stand the funny bro­ken English.

“Das ist gut!” “Die En­gel-kinder!” cried the poor things, as they ate, and warmed their pur­ple hands at the com­fort­able blaze.

The girls had never been called an­gel chil­dren be­fore, and thought it very agree­able, es­pe­cially Jo, who had been con­sid­ered a “San­cho” ever since she was born. That was a very happy break­fast, though they didn’t get any of it; and when they went away, leav­ing com­fort be­hind, I think there were not in all the city four mer­rier peo­ple than the hun­gry lit­tle girls who gave away their break­fasts and con­tented them­selves with bread and milk on Christ­mas morn­ing.

“That’s lov­ing our neigh­bor bet­ter than our­selves, and I like it,” said Meg, as they set out their presents, while their mother was up­stairs col­lect­ing clothes for the poor Hum­mels.

Not a very splen­did show, but there was a great deal of love done up in the few lit­tle bun­dles; and the tall vase of red roses, white chrysan­the­mums, and trail­ing vines, which stood in the mid­dle, gave quite an el­e­gant air to the ta­ble.

“She’s com­ing! Strike up, Beth! Open the door, Amy! Three cheers for Marmee!” cried Jo, pranc­ing about, while Meg went to con­duct mother to the seat of honor.

Beth played her gayest march, Amy threw open the door, and Meg en­acted es­cort with great dig­nity. Mrs. March was both sur­prised and touched; and smiled with her eyes full as she ex­am­ined her presents, and read the lit­tle notes which ac­com­pa­nied them. The slip­pers went on at once, a new hand­ker­chief was slipped into her pocket, well scented with Amy’s cologne, the rose was fas­tened in her bo­som, and the nice gloves were pro­nounced a “per­fect fit.”

There was a good deal of laugh­ing and kiss­ing and ex­plain­ing, in the sim­ple, lov­ing fash­ion which makes these home-fes­ti­vals so pleas­ant at the time, so sweet to re­mem­ber long af­ter­ward, and then all fell to work.

The morn­ing char­i­ties and cer­e­monies took so much time that the rest of the day was de­voted to prepa­ra­tions for the evening fes­tiv­i­ties. Be­ing still too young to go of­ten to the the­atre, and not rich enough to af­ford any great out­lay for pri­vate per­for­mances, the girls put their wits to work, and—ne­ces­sity be­ing the mother of in­ven­tion—made what­ever they needed. Very clever were some of their pro­duc­tions—paste­board gui­tars, an­tique lamps made of old-fash­ioned but­ter-boats cov­ered with sil­ver pa­per, gor­geous robes of old cot­ton, glit­ter­ing with tin span­gles from a pickle fac­tory, and ar­mor cov­ered with the same use­ful di­a­mond-shaped bits, left in sheets when the lids of tin pre­serve-pots were cut out. The fur­ni­ture was used to be­ing turned topsy-turvy, and the big cham­ber was the scene of many in­no­cent rev­els.

No gen­tle­men were ad­mit­ted; so Jo played male parts to her heart’s con­tent, and took im­mense sat­is­fac­tion in a pair of rus­set-leather boots given her by a friend, who knew a lady who knew an ac­tor. Th­ese boots, an old foil, and a slashed dou­blet once used by an artist for some pic­ture, were Jo’s chief trea­sures, and ap­peared on all oc­ca­sions. The small­ness of the com­pany made it nec­es­sary for the two prin­ci­pal ac­tors to take sev­eral parts apiece; and they cer­tainly de­served some credit for the hard work they did in learn­ing three or four dif­fer­ent parts, whisk­ing in and out of var­i­ous cos­tumes, and man­ag­ing the stage be­sides. It was ex­cel­lent drill for their mem­o­ries, a harm­less amuse­ment, and em­ployed many hours which oth­er­wise would have been idle, lonely, or spent in less prof­itable so­ci­ety.

On Christ­mas night, a dozen girls piled on to the bed which was the dress-cir­cle, and sat be­fore the blue and yel­low chintz cur­tains in a most flat­ter­ing state of ex­pectancy. There was a good deal of rustling and whis­per­ing be­hind the cur­tain, a tri­fle of lamp-smoke, and an oc­ca­sional gig­gle from Amy, who was apt to get hys­ter­i­cal in the ex­cite­ment of the mo­ment. Presently a bell sounded, the cur­tains flew apart, and the Oper­atic Tragedy be­gan.

“A gloomy wood,” ac­cord­ing to the one play­bill, was rep­re­sented by a few shrubs in pots, green baize on the floor, and a cave in the dis­tance. This cave was made with a clotheshorse for a roof, bu­reaus for walls; and in it was a small fur­nace in full blast, with a black pot on it, and an old witch bend­ing over it. The stage was dark, and the glow of the fur­nace had a fine ef­fect, es­pe­cially as real steam is­sued from the ket­tle when the witch took off the cover. A mo­ment was al­lowed for the first thrill to sub­side; then Hugo, the vil­lain, stalked in with a clank­ing sword at his side, a slouched hat, black beard, mys­te­ri­ous cloak, and the boots. After pac­ing to and fro in much ag­i­ta­tion, he struck his fore­head, and burst out in a wild strain, singing of his ha­tred to Roderigo, his love for Zara, and his pleas­ing res­o­lu­tion to kill the one and win the other. The gruff tones of Hugo’s voice, with an oc­ca­sional shout when his feel­ings over­came him, were very im­pres­sive, and the au­di­ence ap­plauded the mo­ment he paused for breath. Bow­ing with the air of one ac­cus­tomed to pub­lic praise, he stole to the cav­ern, and or­dered Ha­gar to come forth with a com­mand­ing “What ho, min­ion! I need thee!”

Out came Meg, with gray horse­hair hang­ing about her face, a red and black robe, a staff, and ca­bal­is­tic signs upon her cloak. Hugo de­manded a po­tion to make Zara adore him, and one to de­stroy Roderigo. Ha­gar, in a fine dra­matic melody, promised both, and pro­ceeded to call up the spirit who would bring the love philter:—

“Hither, hither, from thy home,
Airy sprite, I bid thee come!
Born of roses, fed on dew,
Charms and po­tions canst thou brew?
Bring me here, with elfin speed,
The fra­grant philter which I need;
Make it sweet and swift and strong,
Spirit, an­swer now my song!”

A soft strain of mu­sic sounded, and then at the back of the cave ap­peared a lit­tle fig­ure in cloudy white, with glit­ter­ing wings, golden hair, and a gar­land of roses on its head. Wav­ing a wand, it sang—

“Hither I come,
From my airy home,
Afar in the sil­ver moon.
Take the magic spell,
And use it well,
Or its power will van­ish soon!”

And, drop­ping a small, gilded bot­tle at the witch’s feet, the spirit van­ished. Another chant from Ha­gar pro­duced an­other ap­pari­tion—not a lovely one; for, with a bang, an ugly black imp ap­peared, and, hav­ing croaked a re­ply, tossed a dark bot­tle at Hugo, and dis­ap­peared with a mock­ing laugh. Hav­ing war­bled his thanks and put the po­tions in his boots, Hugo de­parted; and Ha­gar in­formed the au­di­ence that, as he had killed a few of her friends in times past, she has cursed him, and in­tends to thwart his plans, and be re­venged on him. Then the cur­tain fell, and the au­di­ence re­posed and ate candy while dis­cussing the mer­its of the play.

A good deal of ham­mer­ing went on be­fore the cur­tain rose again; but when it be­came ev­i­dent what a mas­ter­piece of stage-car­pen­ter­ing had been got up, no one mur­mured at the de­lay. It was truly su­perb! A tower rose to the ceil­ing; half­way up ap­peared a win­dow, with a lamp burn­ing at it, and be­hind the white cur­tain ap­peared Zara in a lovely blue and sil­ver dress, wait­ing for Roderigo. He came in gor­geous ar­ray, with plumed cap, red cloak, chest­nut love-locks, a gui­tar, and the boots, of course. Kneel­ing at the foot of the tower, he sang a ser­e­nade in melt­ing tones. Zara replied, and, af­ter a mu­si­cal di­a­logue, con­sented to fly. Then came the grand ef­fect of the play. Roderigo pro­duced a rope-lad­der, with five steps to it, threw up one end, and in­vited Zara to de­scend. Timidly she crept from her lat­tice, put her hand on Roderigo’s shoul­der, and was about to leap grace­fully down, when, “Alas! alas for Zara!” she for­got her train—it caught in the win­dow; the tower tot­tered, leaned for­ward, fell with a crash, and buried the un­happy lovers in the ru­ins!

A uni­ver­sal shriek arose as the rus­set boots waved wildly from the wreck, and a golden head emerged, ex­claim­ing, “I told you so! I told you so!” With won­der­ful pres­ence of mind, Don Pe­dro, the cruel sire, rushed in, dragged out his daugh­ter, with a hasty aside—

“Don’t laugh! Act as if it was all right!”—and, or­der­ing Roderigo up, ban­ished him from the king­dom with wrath and scorn. Though de­cid­edly shaken by the fall of the tower upon him, Roderigo de­fied the old gen­tle­man, and re­fused to stir. This daunt­less ex­am­ple fired Zara: she also de­fied her sire, and he or­dered them both to the deep­est dun­geons of the cas­tle. A stout lit­tle re­tainer came in with chains, and led them away, look­ing very much fright­ened, and ev­i­dently for­get­ting the speech he ought to have made.

Act third was the cas­tle hall; and here Ha­gar ap­peared, hav­ing come to free the lovers and fin­ish Hugo. She hears him com­ing, and hides; sees him put the po­tions into two cups of wine, and bid the timid lit­tle ser­vant “Bear them to the cap­tives in their cells, and tell them I shall come anon.” The ser­vant takes Hugo aside to tell him some­thing, and Ha­gar changes the cups for two oth­ers which are harm­less. Fer­di­nando, the “min­ion,” car­ries them away, and Ha­gar puts back the cup which holds the poi­son meant for Roderigo. Hugo, get­ting thirsty af­ter a long war­ble, drinks it, loses his wits, and, af­ter a good deal of clutch­ing and stamp­ing, falls flat and dies; while Ha­gar in­forms him what she has done in a song of ex­quis­ite power and melody.

This was a truly thrilling scene, though some per­sons might have thought that the sud­den tum­bling down of a quan­tity of long hair rather marred the ef­fect of the vil­lain’s death. He was called be­fore the cur­tain, and with great pro­pri­ety ap­peared, lead­ing Ha­gar, whose singing was con­sid­ered more won­der­ful than all the rest of the per­for­mance put to­gether.

Act fourth dis­played the de­spair­ing Roderigo on the point of stab­bing him­self, be­cause he has been told that Zara has de­serted him. Just as the dag­ger is at his heart, a lovely song is sung un­der his win­dow, in­form­ing him that Zara is true, but in dan­ger, and he can save her, if he will. A key is thrown in, which un­locks the door, and in a spasm of rap­ture he tears off his chains, and rushes away to find and res­cue his la­dylove.

Act fifth opened with a stormy scene be­tween Zara and Don Pe­dro. He wishes her to go into a con­vent, but she won’t hear of it; and, af­ter a touch­ing ap­peal, is about to faint, when Roderigo dashes in and de­mands her hand. Don Pe­dro re­fuses, be­cause he is not rich. They shout and ges­tic­u­late tremen­dously, but can­not agree, and Roderigo is about to bear away the ex­hausted Zara, when the timid ser­vant en­ters with a let­ter and a bag from Ha­gar, who has mys­te­ri­ously dis­ap­peared. The lat­ter in­forms the party that she be­queaths un­told wealth to the young pair, and an aw­ful doom to Don Pe­dro, if he doesn’t make them happy. The bag is opened, and sev­eral quarts of tin money shower down upon the stage, till it is quite glo­ri­fied with the glit­ter. This en­tirely soft­ens the “stern sire”: he con­sents with­out a mur­mur, all join in a joy­ful cho­rus, and the cur­tain falls upon the lovers kneel­ing to re­ceive Don Pe­dro’s bless­ing in at­ti­tudes of the most ro­man­tic grace.

Tu­mul­tuous ap­plause fol­lowed, but re­ceived an un­ex­pected check; for the cot-bed, on which the “dress-cir­cle” was built, sud­denly shut up, and ex­tin­guished the en­thu­si­as­tic au­di­ence. Roderigo and Don Pe­dro flew to the res­cue, and all were taken out un­hurt, though many were speech­less with laugh­ter. The ex­cite­ment had hardly sub­sided, when Han­nah ap­peared, with “Mrs. March’s com­pli­ments, and would the ladies walk down to sup­per.”

This was a sur­prise, even to the ac­tors; and, when they saw the ta­ble, they looked at one an­other in rap­tur­ous amaze­ment. It was like Marmee to get up a lit­tle treat for them; but any­thing so fine as this was un­heard-of since the de­parted days of plenty. There was ice-cream—ac­tu­ally two dishes of it, pink and white—and cake and fruit and dis­tract­ing French bon­bons, and, in the mid­dle of the ta­ble, four great bou­quets of hot­house flow­ers!

It quite took their breath away; and they stared first at the ta­ble and then at their mother, who looked as if she en­joyed it im­mensely.

“Is it fairies?” asked Amy,

“It’s Santa Claus,” said Beth.

“Mother did it”; and Meg smiled her sweet­est, in spite of her gray beard and white eye­brows.

“Aunt March had a good fit, and sent the sup­per,” cried Jo, with a sud­den in­spi­ra­tion.

“All wrong. Old Mr. Lau­rence sent it,” replied Mrs. March.

“The Lau­rence boy’s grand­fa­ther! What in the world put such a thing into his head? We don’t know him!” ex­claimed Meg.

“Han­nah told one of his ser­vants about your break­fast party. He is an odd old gen­tle­man, but that pleased him. He knew my fa­ther, years ago; and he sent me a po­lite note this af­ter­noon, say­ing he hoped I would al­low him to ex­press his friendly feel­ing to­ward my chil­dren by send­ing them a few tri­fles in honor of the day. I could not refuse; and so you have a lit­tle feast at night to make up for the bread-and-milk break­fast.”

“That boy put it into his head, I know he did! He’s a cap­i­tal fel­low, and I wish we could get ac­quainted. He looks as if he’d like to know us; but he’s bash­ful, and Meg is so prim she won’t let me speak to him when we pass,” said Jo, as the plates went round, and the ice be­gan to melt out of sight, with “Ohs!” and “Ahs!” of sat­is­fac­tion.

“You mean the peo­ple who live in the big house next door, don’t you?” asked one of the girls. “My mother knows old Mr. Lau­rence; but says he’s very proud, and doesn’t like to mix with his neigh­bors. He keeps his grand­son shut up, when he isn’t rid­ing or walk­ing with his tu­tor, and makes him study very hard. We in­vited him to our party, but he didn’t come. Mother says he’s very nice, though he never speaks to us girls.”

“Our cat ran away once, and he brought her back, and we talked over the fence, and were get­ting on cap­i­tally—all about cricket, and so on—when he saw Meg com­ing, and walked off. I mean to know him some day; for he needs fun, I’m sure he does,” said Jo de­cid­edly.

“I like his man­ners, and he looks like a lit­tle gen­tle­man; so I’ve no ob­jec­tion to your know­ing him, if a proper op­por­tu­nity comes. He brought the flow­ers him­self; and I should have asked him in, if I had been sure what was go­ing on up­stairs. He looked so wist­ful as he went away, hear­ing the frolic, and ev­i­dently hav­ing none of his own.”

“It’s a mercy you didn’t, mother!” laughed Jo, look­ing at her boots. “But we’ll have an­other play, some time, that he can see. Per­haps he’ll help act; wouldn’t that be jolly?”

“I never had such a fine bou­quet be­fore! How pretty it is!” And Meg ex­am­ined her flow­ers with great in­ter­est.

“They are lovely! But Beth’s roses are sweeter to me,” said Mrs. March, smelling the half-dead posy in her belt.

Beth nes­tled up to her, and whis­pered softly, “I wish I could send my bunch to fa­ther. I’m afraid he isn’t hav­ing such a merry Christ­mas as we are.”

III The Laurence Boy

“Jo! Jo! where are you?” cried Meg, at the foot of the gar­ret stairs.

“Here!” an­swered a husky voice from above; and, run­ning up, Meg found her sis­ter eat­ing ap­ples and cry­ing over the Heir of Red­clyffe, wrapped up in a com­forter on an old three-legged sofa by the sunny win­dow. This was Jo’s fa­vorite refuge; and here she loved to re­tire with half a dozen rus­sets and a nice book, to en­joy the quiet and the so­ci­ety of a pet rat who lived near by, and didn’t mind her a par­ti­cle. As Meg ap­peared, Scrab­ble whisked into his hole. Jo shook the tears off her cheeks, and waited to hear the news.

“Such fun! only see! a reg­u­lar note of in­vi­ta­tion from Mrs. Gar­diner for to­mor­row night!” cried Meg, wav­ing the pre­cious pa­per, and then pro­ceed­ing to read it, with girl­ish de­light.

“ ‘Mrs. Gar­diner would be happy to see Miss March and Miss Josephine at a lit­tle dance on New-Year’s Eve.’ Marmee is will­ing we should go; now what shall we wear?”

“What’s the use of ask­ing that, when you know we shall wear our poplins, be­cause we haven’t got any­thing else?” an­swered Jo, with her mouth full.

“If I only had a silk!” sighed Meg. “Mother says I may when I’m eigh­teen, per­haps; but two years is an ev­er­last­ing time to wait.”

“I’m sure our pops look like silk, and they are nice enough for us. Yours is as good as new, but I for­got the burn and the tear in mine. What­ever shall I do? the burn shows badly, and I can’t take any out.”

“You must sit still all you can, and keep your back out of sight; the front is all right. I shall have a new rib­bon for my hair, and Marmee will lend me her lit­tle pearl pin, and my new slip­pers are lovely, and my gloves will do, though they aren’t as nice as I’d like.”

“Mine are spoilt with lemon­ade, and I can’t get any new ones, so I shall have to go with­out,” said Jo, who never trou­bled her­self much about dress.

“You must have gloves, or I won’t go,” cried Meg de­cid­edly. “Gloves are more im­por­tant than any­thing else; you can’t dance with­out them, and if you don’t I should be so mor­ti­fied.”

“Then I’ll stay still. I don’t care much for com­pany danc­ing; it’s no fun to go sail­ing round; I like to fly about and cut ca­pers.”

“You can’t ask mother for new ones, they are so ex­pen­sive, and you are so care­less. She said, when you spoilt the oth­ers, that she shouldn’t get you any more this win­ter. Can’t you make them do?” asked Meg anx­iously.

“I can hold them crum­pled up in my hand, so no one will know how stained they are: that’s all I can do. No! I’ll tell you how we can man­age—each wear one good one and carry a bad one; don’t you see?”

“Your hands are big­ger than mine, and you will stretch my glove dread­fully,” be­gan Meg, whose gloves were a ten­der point with her.

“Then I’ll go with­out. I don’t care what peo­ple say!” cried Jo, tak­ing up her book.

“You may have it, you may! only don’t stain it, and do be­have nicely. Don’t put your hands be­hind you, or stare, or say ‘Christo­pher Colum­bus!’ will you?”

“Don’t worry about me; I’ll be as prim as I can, and not get into any scrapes, if I can help it. Now go and an­swer your note, and let me fin­ish this splen­did story.”

So Meg went away to “ac­cept with thanks,” look over her dress, and sing blithely as she did up her one real lace frill; while Jo fin­ished her story, her four ap­ples, and had a game of romps with Scrab­ble.

On New-Year’s Eve the par­lor was de­serted, for the two younger girls played dress­ing-maids, and the two el­der were ab­sorbed in the all-im­por­tant busi­ness of “get­ting ready for the party.” Sim­ple as the toi­lets were, there was a great deal of run­ning up and down, laugh­ing and talk­ing, and at one time a strong smell of burnt hair per­vaded the house. Meg wanted a few curls about her face, and Jo un­der­took to pinch the pa­pered locks with a pair of hot tongs.

“Ought they to smoke like that?” asked Beth, from her perch on the bed.

“It’s the damp­ness dry­ing,” replied Jo.

“What a queer smell! it’s like burnt feath­ers,” ob­served Amy, smooth­ing her own pretty curls with a su­pe­rior air.

“There, now I’ll take off the pa­pers and you’ll see a cloud of lit­tle ringlets,” said Jo, putting down the tongs.

She did take off the pa­pers, but no cloud of ringlets ap­peared, for the hair came with the pa­pers, and the hor­ri­fied hair­dresser laid a row of lit­tle scorched bun­dles on the bu­reau be­fore her vic­tim.

“Oh, oh, oh! what have you done? I’m spoilt! I can’t go! My hair, oh, my hair!” wailed Meg, look­ing with de­spair at the un­even friz­zle on her fore­head.

“Just my luck! you shouldn’t have asked me to do it; I al­ways spoil ev­ery­thing. I’m so sorry, but the tongs were too hot, and so I’ve made a mess,” groaned poor Jo, re­gard­ing the black pan­cakes with tears of re­gret.

“It isn’t spoilt; just friz­zle it, and tie your rib­bon so the ends come on your fore­head a bit, and it will look like the last fash­ion. I’ve seen many girls do it so,” said Amy con­sol­ingly.

“Serves me right for try­ing to be fine. I wish I’d let my hair alone,” cried Meg petu­lantly.

“So do I, it was so smooth and pretty. But it will soon grow out again,” said Beth, com­ing to kiss and com­fort the shorn sheep.

After var­i­ous lesser mishaps, Meg was fin­ished at last, and by the united ex­er­tions of the fam­ily Jo’s hair was got up and her dress on. They looked very well in their sim­ple suits—Meg in sil­very drab, with a blue vel­vet snood, lace frills, and the pearl pin; Jo in ma­roon, with a stiff, gen­tle­manly linen col­lar, and a white chrysan­the­mum or two for her only or­na­ment. Each put on one nice light glove, and car­ried one soiled one, and all pro­nounced the ef­fect “quite easy and fine.” Meg’s high-heeled slip­pers were very tight, and hurt her, though she would not own it, and Jo’s nine­teen hair­pins all seemed stuck straight into her head, which was not ex­actly com­fort­able; but, dear me, let us be el­e­gant or die!

“Have a good time, dearies!” said Mrs. March, as the sis­ters went dain­tily down the walk. “Don’t eat much sup­per, and come away at eleven, when I send Han­nah for you.” As the gate clashed be­hind them, a voice cried from a win­dow—

“Girls, girls! have you both got nice pocket-hand­ker­chiefs?”

“Yes, yes, spandy nice, and Meg has cologne on hers,” cried Jo, adding, with a laugh, as they went on, “I do be­lieve Marmee would ask that if we were all run­ning away from an earth­quake.”

“It is one of her aris­to­cratic tastes, and quite proper, for a real lady is al­ways known by neat boots, gloves, and hand­ker­chief,” replied Meg, who had a good many lit­tle “aris­to­cratic tastes” of her own.

“Now don’t for­get to keep the bad breadth out of sight, Jo. Is my sash right? and does my hair look very bad?” said Meg, as she turned from the glass in Mrs. Gar­diner’s dress­ing-room, af­ter a pro­longed prink.

“I know I shall for­get. If you see me do­ing any­thing wrong, just re­mind me by a wink, will you?” re­turned Jo, giv­ing her col­lar a twitch and her head a hasty brush.

“No, wink­ing isn’t la­dy­like; I’ll lift my eye­brows if any­thing is wrong, and nod if you are all right. Now hold your shoul­ders straight, and take short steps, and don’t shake hands if you are in­tro­duced to any­one: it isn’t the thing.”

“How do you learn all the proper ways? I never can. Isn’t that mu­sic gay?”

Down they went, feel­ing a tri­fle timid, for they sel­dom went to par­ties, and, in­for­mal as this lit­tle gath­er­ing was, it was an event to them. Mrs. Gar­diner, a stately old lady, greeted them kindly, and handed them over to the el­dest of her six daugh­ters. Meg knew Sal­lie, and was at her ease very soon; but Jo, who didn’t care much for girls or girl­ish gos­sip, stood about, with her back care­fully against the wall, and felt as much out of place as a colt in a flower-gar­den. Half a dozen jovial lads were talk­ing about skates in an­other part of the room, and she longed to go and join them, for skat­ing was one of the joys of her life. She tele­graphed her wish to Meg, but the eye­brows went up so alarm­ingly that she dared not stir. No one came to talk to her, and one by one the group near her dwin­dled away, till she was left alone. She could not roam about and amuse her­self, for the burnt breadth would show, so she stared at peo­ple rather for­lornly till the danc­ing be­gan. Meg was asked at once, and the tight slip­pers tripped about so briskly that none would have guessed the pain their wearer suf­fered smil­ingly. Jo saw a big red­headed youth ap­proach­ing her cor­ner, and fear­ing he meant to en­gage her, she slipped into a cur­tained re­cess, in­tend­ing to peep and en­joy her­self in peace. Un­for­tu­nately, an­other bash­ful per­son had cho­sen the same refuge; for, as the cur­tain fell be­hind her, she found her­self face to face with the “Lau­rence boy.”

“Dear me, I didn’t know any­one was here!” stam­mered Jo, pre­par­ing to back out as speed­ily as she had bounced in.

But the boy laughed, and said pleas­antly, though he looked a lit­tle star­tled—

“Don’t mind me; stay, if you like.”

“Sha’n’t I dis­turb you?”

“Not a bit; I only came here be­cause I don’t know many peo­ple, and felt rather strange at first, you know.”

“So did I. Don’t go away, please, un­less you’d rather.”

The boy sat down again and looked at his pumps, till Jo said, try­ing to be po­lite and easy—

“I think I’ve had the plea­sure of see­ing you be­fore; you live near us, don’t you?”

“Next door”; and he looked up and laughed out­right, for Jo’s prim man­ner was rather funny when he re­mem­bered how they had chat­ted about cricket when he brought the cat home.

That put Jo at her ease; and she laughed too, as she said, in her hearti­est way—

“We did have such a good time over your nice Christ­mas present.”

“Grandpa sent it.”

“But you put it into his head, didn’t you, now?”

“How is your cat, Miss March?” asked the boy, try­ing to look sober, while his black eyes shone with fun.

“Nicely, thank you, Mr. Lau­rence; but I am not Miss March, I’m only Jo,” re­turned the young lady.

“I’m not Mr. Lau­rence, I’m only Lau­rie.”

“Lau­rie Lau­rence—what an odd name!”

“My first name is Theodore, but I don’t like it, for the fel­lows called me Dora, so I made them say Lau­rie in­stead.”

“I hate my name, too—so sen­ti­men­tal! I wish ev­ery­one would say Jo, in­stead of Josephine. How did you make the boys stop call­ing you Dora?”

“I thrashed ’em.”

“I can’t thrash Aunt March, so I sup­pose I shall have to bear it”; and Jo re­signed her­self with a sigh.

“Don’t you like to dance, Miss Jo?” asked Lau­rie, look­ing as if he thought the name suited her.

“I like it well enough if there is plenty of room, and ev­ery­one is lively. In a place like this I’m sure to up­set some­thing, tread on peo­ple’s toes, or do some­thing dread­ful, so I keep out of mis­chief, and let Meg sail about. Don’t you dance?”

“Some­times; you see I’ve been abroad a good many years, and haven’t been into com­pany enough yet to know how you do things here.”

“Abroad!” cried Jo. “Oh, tell me about it! I love dearly to hear peo­ple de­scribe their trav­els.”

Lau­rie didn’t seem to know where to be­gin; but Jo’s ea­ger ques­tions soon set him go­ing, and he told her how he had been at school in Ve­vay, where the boys never wore hats, and had a fleet of boats on the lake, and for hol­i­day fun went walk­ing trips about Switzer­land with their teach­ers.

“Don’t I wish I’d been there!” cried Jo. “Did you go to Paris?”

“We spent last win­ter there.”

“Can you talk French?”

“We were not al­lowed to speak any­thing else at Ve­vay.”

“Do say some! I can read it, but can’t pro­nounce.”

“Quel nom a cette je­une demoi­selle en les pan­tou­fles jo­lis?” said Lau­rie good-na­turedly.

“How nicely you do it! Let me see—you said, ‘Who is the young lady in the pretty slip­pers,’ didn’t you?”

“Oui, made­moi­selle.”

“It’s my sis­ter Mar­garet, and you knew it was! Do you think she is pretty?”

“Yes; she makes me think of the Ger­man girls, she looks so fresh and quiet, and dances like a lady.”

Jo quite glowed with plea­sure at this boy­ish praise of her sis­ter, and stored it up to re­peat to Meg. Both peeped and crit­i­cised and chat­ted, till they felt like old ac­quain­tances. Lau­rie’s bash­ful­ness soon wore off; for Jo’s gen­tle­manly de­meanor amused and set him at his ease, and Jo was her merry self again, be­cause her dress was for­got­ten, and no­body lifted their eye­brows at her. She liked the “Lau­rence boy” bet­ter than ever, and took sev­eral good looks at him, so that she might de­scribe him to the girls; for they had no broth­ers, very few male cousins, and boys were al­most un­known crea­tures to them.

“Curly black hair; brown skin; big, black eyes; hand­some nose; fine teeth; small hands and feet; taller than I am; very po­lite, for a boy, and al­to­gether jolly. Won­der how old he is?”

It was on the tip of Jo’s tongue to ask; but she checked her­self in time, and, with un­usual tact, tried to find out in a round­about way.

“I sup­pose you are go­ing to col­lege soon? I see you peg­ging away at your books—no, I mean study­ing hard”; and Jo blushed at the dread­ful “peg­ging” which had es­caped her.

Lau­rie smiled, but didn’t seem shocked, and an­swered, with a shrug—

“Not for a year or two; I won’t go be­fore sev­en­teen, any­way.”

“Aren’t you but fif­teen?” asked Jo, look­ing at the tall lad, whom she had imag­ined sev­en­teen al­ready.

“Six­teen, next month.”

“How I wish I was go­ing to col­lege! You don’t look as if you liked it.”

“I hate it! Noth­ing but grind­ing or sky­lark­ing. And I don’t like the way fel­lows do ei­ther, in this coun­try.”

“What do you like?”

“To live in Italy, and to en­joy my­self in my own way.”

Jo wanted very much to ask what his own way was; but his black brows looked rather threat­en­ing as he knit them; so she changed the sub­ject by say­ing, as her foot kept time, “That’s a splen­did polka! Why don’t you go and try it?”

“If you will come too,” he an­swered, with a gal­lant lit­tle bow.

“I can’t; for I told Meg I wouldn’t, be­cause—” There Jo stopped, and looked un­de­cided whether to tell or to laugh.

“Be­cause what?” asked Lau­rie cu­ri­ously.

“You won’t tell?”

“Never!”

“Well, I have a bad trick of stand­ing be­fore the fire, and so I burn my frocks, and I scorched this one; and, though it’s nicely mended, it shows, and Meg told me to keep still, so no one would see it. You may laugh, if you want to; it is funny, I know.”

But Lau­rie didn’t laugh; he only looked down a minute, and the ex­pres­sion of his face puz­zled Jo, when he said very gen­tly—

“Never mind that; I’ll tell you how we can man­age: there’s a long hall out there, and we can dance grandly, and no one will see us. Please come?”

Jo thanked him, and gladly went, wish­ing she had two neat gloves, when she saw the nice, pearl-col­ored ones her part­ner wore. The hall was empty, and they had a grand polka; for Lau­rie danced well, and taught her the Ger­man step, which de­lighted Jo, be­ing full of swing and spring. When the mu­sic stopped, they sat down on the stairs to get their breath; and Lau­rie was in the midst of an ac­count of a stu­dents’ fes­ti­val at Hei­del­berg, when Meg ap­peared in search of her sis­ter. She beck­oned, and Jo re­luc­tantly fol­lowed her into a side-room, where she found her on a sofa, hold­ing her foot, and look­ing pale.

“I’ve sprained my an­kle. That stupid high heel turned, and gave me a sad wrench. It aches so, I can hardly stand, and I don’t know how I’m ever go­ing to get home,” she said, rock­ing to and fro in pain.

“I knew you’d hurt your feet with those silly shoes. I’m sorry. But I don’t see what you can do, ex­cept get a car­riage, or stay here all night,” an­swered Jo, softly rub­bing the poor an­kle as she spoke.

“I can’t have a car­riage, with­out its cost­ing ever so much. I dare say I can’t get one at all; for most peo­ple come in their own, and it’s a long way to the sta­ble, and no one to send.”

“I’ll go.”

“No, in­deed! It’s past nine, and dark as Egypt. I can’t stop here, for the house is full. Sal­lie has some girls stay­ing with her. I’ll rest till Han­nah comes, and then do the best I can.”

“I’ll ask Lau­rie; he will go,” said Jo, look­ing re­lieved as the idea oc­curred to her.

“Mercy, no! Don’t ask or tell any­one. Get me my rub­bers, and put these slip­pers with our things. I can’t dance any more; but as soon as sup­per is over, watch for Han­nah, and tell me the minute she comes.”

“They are go­ing out to sup­per now. I’ll stay with you; I’d rather.”

“No, dear, run along, and bring me some cof­fee. I’m so tired, I can’t stir!”

So Meg re­clined, with rub­bers well hid­den, and Jo went blun­der­ing away to the din­ing-room, which she found af­ter go­ing into a china-closet, and open­ing the door of a room where old Mr. Gar­diner was tak­ing a lit­tle pri­vate re­fresh­ment. Mak­ing a dart at the ta­ble, she se­cured the cof­fee, which she im­me­di­ately spilt, thereby mak­ing the front of her dress as bad as the back.

“Oh, dear, what a blun­der­buss I am!” ex­claimed Jo, fin­ish­ing Meg’s glove by scrub­bing her gown with it.

“Can I help you?” said a friendly voice; and there was Lau­rie, with a full cup in one hand and a plate of ice in the other.

“I was try­ing to get some­thing for Meg, who is very tired, and some­one shook me; and here I am, in a nice state,” an­swered Jo, glanc­ing dis­mally from the stained skirt to the cof­fee-col­ored glove.

“Too bad! I was look­ing for some­one to give this to. May I take it to your sis­ter?”

“Oh, thank you! I’ll show you where she is. I don’t of­fer to take it my­self, for I should only get into an­other scrape if I did.”

Jo led the way; and, as if used to wait­ing on ladies, Lau­rie drew up a lit­tle ta­ble, brought a sec­ond in­stal­ment of cof­fee and ice for Jo, and was so oblig­ing that even par­tic­u­lar Meg pro­nounced him a “nice boy.” They had a merry time over the bon­bons and mot­toes, and were in the midst of a quiet game of “Buzz,” with two or three other young peo­ple who had strayed in, when Han­nah ap­peared. Meg for­got her foot, and rose so quickly that she was forced to catch hold of Jo, with an ex­cla­ma­tion of pain.

“Hush! Don’t say any­thing,” she whis­pered, adding aloud, “It’s noth­ing. I turned my foot a lit­tle, that’s all”; and limped up­stairs to put her things on.

Han­nah scolded, Meg cried, and Jo was at her wits’ end, till she de­cided to take things into her own hands. Slip­ping out, she ran down, and, find­ing a ser­vant, asked if he could get her a car­riage. It hap­pened to be a hired waiter, who knew noth­ing about the neigh­bor­hood; and Jo was look­ing round for help, when Lau­rie, who had heard what she said, came up, and of­fered his grand­fa­ther’s car­riage, which had just come for him, he said.

“It’s so early! You can’t mean to go yet?” be­gan Jo, look­ing re­lieved, but hes­i­tat­ing to ac­cept the of­fer.

“I al­ways go early—I do, truly! Please let me take you home? It’s all on my way, you know, and it rains, they say.”

That set­tled it; and, telling him of Meg’s mishap, Jo grate­fully ac­cepted, and rushed up to bring down the rest of the party. Han­nah hated rain as much as a cat does; so she made no trou­ble, and they rolled away in the lux­u­ri­ous close car­riage, feel­ing very fes­tive and el­e­gant. Lau­rie went on the box, so Meg could keep her foot up, and the girls talked over their party in free­dom.

“I had a cap­i­tal time. Did you?” asked Jo, rum­pling up her hair, and mak­ing her­self com­fort­able.

“Yes, till I hurt my­self. Sal­lie’s friend, An­nie Mof­fat, took a fancy to me, and asked me to come and spend a week with her, when Sal­lie does. She is go­ing in the spring, when the opera comes; and it will be per­fectly splen­did, if mother only lets me go,” an­swered Meg, cheer­ing up at the thought.

“I saw you danc­ing with the red­headed man I ran away from. Was he nice?”

“Oh, very! His hair is auburn, not red; and he was very po­lite, and I had a de­li­cious re­dowa with him.”

“He looked like a grasshop­per in a fit, when he did the new step. Lau­rie and I couldn’t help laugh­ing. Did you hear us?”

“No; but it was very rude. What were you about all that time, hid­den away there?”

Jo told her ad­ven­tures, and, by the time she had fin­ished, they were at home. With many thanks, they said “Good night,” and crept in, hop­ing to dis­turb no one; but the in­stant their door creaked, two lit­tle night­caps bobbed up, and two sleepy but ea­ger voices cried out—

“Tell about the party! tell about the party!”

With what Meg called “a great want of man­ners,” Jo had saved some bon­bons for the lit­tle girls; and they soon sub­sided, af­ter hear­ing the most thrilling events of the evening.

“I de­clare, it re­ally seems like be­ing a fine young lady, to come home from the party in a car­riage, and sit in my dress­ing-gown, with a maid to wait on me,” said Meg, as Jo bound up her foot with ar­nica, and brushed her hair.

“I don’t be­lieve fine young ladies en­joy them­selves a bit more than we do, in spite of our burnt hair, old gowns, one glove apiece, and tight slip­pers that sprain our an­kles when we are silly enough to wear them.” And I think Jo was quite right.

IV Burdens

“Oh dear, how hard it does seem to take up our packs and go on,” sighed Meg, the morn­ing af­ter the party; for, now the hol­i­days were over, the week of mer­ry­mak­ing did not fit her for go­ing on eas­ily with the task she never liked.

“I wish it was Christ­mas or New-Year all the time; wouldn’t it be fun?” an­swered Jo, yawn­ing dis­mally.

“We shouldn’t en­joy our­selves half so much as we do now. But it does seem so nice to have lit­tle sup­pers and bou­quets, and go to par­ties, and drive home, and read and rest, and not work. It’s like other peo­ple, you know, and I al­ways envy girls who do such things; I’m so fond of lux­ury,” said Meg, try­ing to de­cide which of two shabby gowns was the least shabby.

“Well, we can’t have it, so don’t let us grum­ble, but shoul­der our bun­dles and trudge along as cheer­fully as Marmee does. I’m sure Aunt March is a reg­u­lar Old Man of the Sea to me, but I sup­pose when I’ve learned to carry her with­out com­plain­ing, she will tum­ble off, or get so light that I sha’n’t mind her.”

This idea tick­led Jo’s fancy, and put her in good spir­its; but Meg didn’t brighten, for her bur­den, con­sist­ing of four spoilt chil­dren, seemed heav­ier than ever. She hadn’t heart enough even to make her­self pretty, as usual, by putting on a blue neck-rib­bon, and dress­ing her hair in the most be­com­ing way.

“Where’s the use of look­ing nice, when no one sees me but those cross midgets, and no one cares whether I’m pretty or not?” she mut­tered, shut­ting her drawer with a jerk. “I shall have to toil and moil all my days, with only lit­tle bits of fun now and then, and get old and ugly and sour, be­cause I’m poor, and can’t en­joy my life as other girls do. It’s a shame!”

So Meg went down, wear­ing an in­jured look, and wasn’t at all agree­able at break­fast-time. Every­one seemed rather out of sorts, and in­clined to croak. Beth had a headache, and lay on the sofa, try­ing to com­fort her­self with the cat and three kit­tens; Amy was fret­ting be­cause her lessons were not learned, and she couldn’t find her rub­bers; Jo would whis­tle and make a great racket get­ting ready; Mrs. March was very busy try­ing to fin­ish a let­ter, which must go at once; and Han­nah had the grumps, for be­ing up late didn’t suit her.

“There never was such a cross fam­ily!” cried Jo, los­ing her tem­per when she had up­set an ink­stand, bro­ken both boot-lac­ings, and sat down upon her hat.

“You’re the cross­est per­son in it!” re­turned Amy, wash­ing out the sum, that was all wrong, with the tears that had fallen on her slate.

“Beth, if you don’t keep these hor­rid cats down cel­lar I’ll have them drowned,” ex­claimed Meg an­grily, as she tried to get rid of the kit­ten, which had scram­bled up her back, and stuck like a burr just out of reach.

Jo laughed, Meg scolded, Beth im­plored, and Amy wailed, be­cause she couldn’t re­mem­ber how much nine times twelve was.

“Girls, girls, do be quiet one minute! I must get this off by the early mail, and you drive me dis­tracted with your worry,” cried Mrs. March, cross­ing out the third spoilt sen­tence in her let­ter.

There was a mo­men­tary lull, bro­ken by Han­nah, who stalked in, laid two hot turnovers on the ta­ble, and stalked out again. Th­ese turnovers were an in­sti­tu­tion; and the girls called them “muffs,” for they had no oth­ers, and found the hot pies very com­fort­ing to their hands on cold morn­ings. Han­nah never for­got to make them, no mat­ter how busy or grumpy she might be, for the walk was long and bleak; the poor things got no other lunch, and were sel­dom home be­fore two.

“Cud­dle your cats, and get over your headache, Bethy. Good­bye, Marmee; we are a set of ras­cals this morn­ing, but we’ll come home reg­u­lar an­gels. Now then, Meg!” and Jo tramped away, feel­ing that the pil­grims were not set­ting out as they ought to do.

They al­ways looked back be­fore turn­ing the cor­ner, for their mother was al­ways at the win­dow, to nod and smile, and wave her hand to them. Some­how it seemed as if they couldn’t have got through the day with­out that; for, what­ever their mood might be, the last glimpse of that moth­erly face was sure to af­fect them like sun­shine.

“If Marmee shook her fist in­stead of kiss­ing her hand to us, it would serve us right, for more un­grate­ful wretches than we are were never seen,” cried Jo, tak­ing a re­morse­ful sat­is­fac­tion in the snowy walk and bit­ter wind.

“Don’t use such dread­ful ex­pres­sions,” said Meg, from the depths of the vail in which she had shrouded her­self like a nun sick of the world.

“I like good strong words, that mean some­thing,” replied Jo, catch­ing her hat as it took a leap off her head, prepara­tory to fly­ing away al­to­gether.

“Call your­self any names you like; but I am nei­ther a ras­cal nor a wretch, and I don’t choose to be called so.”

“You’re a blighted be­ing, and de­cid­edly cross to­day be­cause you can’t sit in the lap of lux­ury all the time. Poor dear, just wait till I make my for­tune, and you shall revel in car­riages and ice-cream and high-heeled slip­pers and posies and red­headed boys to dance with.”

“How ridicu­lous you are, Jo!” but Meg laughed at the non­sense, and felt bet­ter in spite of her­self.

“Lucky for you I am; for if I put on crushed airs, and tried to be dis­mal, as you do, we should be in a nice state. Thank good­ness, I can al­ways find some­thing funny to keep me up. Don’t croak any more, but come home jolly, there’s a dear.”

Jo gave her sis­ter an en­cour­ag­ing pat on the shoul­der as they parted for the day, each go­ing a dif­fer­ent way, each hug­ging her lit­tle warm turnover, and each try­ing to be cheer­ful in spite of win­try weather, hard work, and the un­sat­is­fied de­sires of plea­sure-lov­ing youth.

When Mr. March lost his prop­erty in try­ing to help an un­for­tu­nate friend, the two old­est girls begged to be al­lowed to do some­thing to­ward their own sup­port, at least. Believ­ing that they could not be­gin too early to cul­ti­vate en­ergy, in­dus­try, and in­de­pen­dence, their par­ents con­sented, and both fell to work with the hearty good­will which in spite of all ob­sta­cles, is sure to suc­ceed at last. Mar­garet found a place as nurs­ery gov­erness, and felt rich with her small salary. As she said, she was “fond of lux­ury,” and her chief trou­ble was poverty. She found it harder to bear than the oth­ers, be­cause she could re­mem­ber a time when home was beau­ti­ful, life full of ease and plea­sure, and want of any kind un­known. She tried not to be en­vi­ous or dis­con­tented, but it was very nat­u­ral that the young girl should long for pretty things, gay friends, ac­com­plish­ments, and a happy life. At the Kings’ she daily saw all she wanted, for the chil­dren’s older sis­ters were just out, and Meg caught fre­quent glimpses of dainty ball-dresses and bou­quets, heard lively gos­sip about the­atres, con­certs, sleigh­ing par­ties, and mer­ry­mak­ings of all kinds, and saw money lav­ished on tri­fles which would have been so pre­cious to her. Poor Meg sel­dom com­plained, but a sense of in­jus­tice made her feel bit­ter to­ward ev­ery­one some­times, for she had not yet learned to know how rich she was in the bless­ings which alone can make life happy.

Jo hap­pened to suit Aunt March, who was lame, and needed an ac­tive per­son to wait upon her. The child­less old lady had of­fered to adopt one of the girls when the trou­bles came, and was much of­fended be­cause her of­fer was de­clined. Other friends told the Marches that they had lost all chance of be­ing re­mem­bered in the rich old lady’s will; but the un­worldly Marches only said—

“We can’t give up our girls for a dozen for­tunes. Rich or poor, we will keep to­gether and be happy in one an­other.”

The old lady wouldn’t speak to them for a time, but hap­pen­ing to meet Jo at a friend’s, some­thing in her com­i­cal face and blunt man­ners struck the old lady’s fancy, and she pro­posed to take her for a com­pan­ion. This did not suit Jo at all; but she ac­cepted the place since noth­ing bet­ter ap­peared, and, to ev­ery­one’s sur­prise, got on re­mark­ably well with her iras­ci­ble rel­a­tive. There was an oc­ca­sional tem­pest, and once Jo had marched home, declar­ing she couldn’t bear it any longer; but Aunt March al­ways cleared up quickly, and sent for her back again with such ur­gency that she could not refuse, for in her heart she rather liked the pep­pery old lady.

I sus­pect that the real at­trac­tion was a large li­brary of fine books, which was left to dust and spi­ders since Un­cle March died. Jo re­mem­bered the kind old gen­tle­man, who used to let her build rail­roads and bridges with his big dic­tio­nar­ies, tell her sto­ries about the queer pic­tures in his Latin books, and buy her cards of gin­ger­bread when­ever he met her in the street. The dim, dusty room, with the busts star­ing down from the tall book­cases, the cosy chairs, the globes, and, best of all, the wilder­ness of books, in which she could wan­der where she liked, made the li­brary a re­gion of bliss to her. The mo­ment Aunt March took her nap, or was busy with com­pany, Jo hur­ried to this quiet place, and, curl­ing her­self up in the easy-chair, de­voured po­etry, ro­mance, his­tory, trav­els, and pic­tures, like a reg­u­lar book­worm. But, like all hap­pi­ness, it did not last long; for as sure as she had just reached the heart of the story, the sweet­est verse of the song, or the most per­ilous ad­ven­ture of her trav­eller, a shrill voice called, “Josy-phine! Josy-phine!” and she had to leave her par­adise to wind yarn, wash the poo­dle, or read Belsham’s Es­says by the hour to­gether.

Jo’s am­bi­tion was to do some­thing very splen­did; what it was she had no idea, as yet, but left it for time to tell her; and, mean­while, found her great­est af­flic­tion in the fact that she couldn’t read, run, and ride as much as she liked. A quick tem­per, sharp tongue, and rest­less spirit were al­ways get­ting her into scrapes, and her life was a se­ries of ups and downs, which were both comic and pa­thetic. But the train­ing she re­ceived at Aunt March’s was just what she needed; and the thought that she was do­ing some­thing to sup­port her­self made her happy, in spite of the per­pet­ual “Josy-phine!”

Beth was too bash­ful to go to school; it had been tried, but she suf­fered so much that it was given up, and she did her lessons at home, with her fa­ther. Even when he went away, and her mother was called to de­vote her skill and en­ergy to Soldiers’ Aid So­ci­eties, Beth went faith­fully on by her­self, and did the best she could. She was a house­wifely lit­tle crea­ture, and helped Han­nah keep home neat and com­fort­able for the work­ers, never think­ing of any re­ward but to be loved. Long, quiet days she spent, not lonely nor idle, for her lit­tle world was peo­pled with imag­i­nary friends, and she was by na­ture a busy bee. There were six dolls to be taken up and dressed ev­ery morn­ing, for Beth was a child still, and loved her pets as well as ever. Not one whole or hand­some one among them; all were out­casts till Beth took them in; for, when her sis­ters out­grew these idols, they passed to her, be­cause Amy would have noth­ing old or ugly. Beth cher­ished them all the more ten­derly for that very rea­son, and set up a hos­pi­tal for in­firm dolls. No pins were ever stuck into their cot­ton vi­tals; no harsh words or blows were ever given them; no ne­glect ever sad­dened the heart of the most re­pul­sive: but all were fed and clothed, nursed and ca­ressed, with an af­fec­tion which never failed. One for­lorn frag­ment of dol­lan­ity had be­longed to Jo; and, hav­ing led a tem­pes­tu­ous life, was left a wreck in the rag­bag, from which dreary poor­house it was res­cued by Beth, and taken to her refuge. Hav­ing no top to its head, she tied on a neat lit­tle cap, and, as both arms and legs were gone, she hid these de­fi­cien­cies by fold­ing it in a blan­ket, and de­vot­ing her best bed to this chronic in­valid. If any­one had known the care lav­ished on that dolly, I think it would have touched their hearts, even while they laughed. She brought it bits of bou­quets; she read to it, took it out to breathe the air, hid­den un­der her coat; she sung it lul­labys, and never went to bed with­out kiss­ing its dirty face, and whis­per­ing ten­derly, “I hope you’ll have a good night, my poor dear.”

Beth had her trou­bles as well as the oth­ers; and not be­ing an an­gel, but a very hu­man lit­tle girl, she of­ten “wept a lit­tle weep,” as Jo said, be­cause she couldn’t take mu­sic lessons and have a fine pi­ano. She loved mu­sic so dearly, tried so hard to learn, and prac­tised away so pa­tiently at the jin­gling old in­stru­ment, that it did seem as if some­one (not to hint Aunt March) ought to help her. No­body did, how­ever, and no­body saw Beth wipe the tears off the yel­low keys, that wouldn’t keep in tune, when she was all alone. She sang like a lit­tle lark about her work, never was too tired to play for Marmee and the girls, and day af­ter day said hope­fully to her­self, “I know I’ll get my mu­sic some time, if I’m good.”

There are many Beths in the world, shy and quiet, sit­ting in cor­ners till needed, and liv­ing for oth­ers so cheer­fully that no one sees the sac­ri­fices till the lit­tle cricket on the hearth stops chirp­ing, and the sweet, sun­shiny pres­ence van­ishes, leav­ing si­lence and shadow be­hind.

If any­body had asked Amy what the great­est trial of her life was, she would have an­swered at once, “My nose.” When she was a baby, Jo had ac­ci­den­tally dropped her into the coal-hod, and Amy in­sisted that the fall had ru­ined her nose for­ever. It was not big, nor red, like poor “Pe­trea’s”; it was only rather flat, and all the pinch­ing in the world could not give it an aris­to­cratic point. No one minded it but her­self, and it was do­ing its best to grow, but Amy felt deeply the want of a Gre­cian nose, and drew whole sheets of hand­some ones to con­sole her­self.

“Lit­tle Raphael,” as her sis­ters called her, had a de­cided tal­ent for draw­ing, and was never so happy as when copy­ing flow­ers, de­sign­ing fairies, or il­lus­trat­ing sto­ries with queer spec­i­mens of art. Her teach­ers com­plained that, in­stead of do­ing her sums, she cov­ered her slate with an­i­mals; the blank pages of her at­las were used to copy maps on; and car­i­ca­tures of the most lu­di­crous de­scrip­tion came flut­ter­ing out of all her books at un­lucky mo­ments. She got through her lessons as well as she could, and man­aged to es­cape rep­ri­mands by be­ing a model of de­port­ment. She was a great fa­vorite with her mates, be­ing good-tem­pered, and pos­sess­ing the happy art of pleas­ing with­out ef­fort. Her lit­tle airs and graces were much ad­mired, so were her ac­com­plish­ments; for be­side her draw­ing, she could play twelve tunes, cro­chet, and read French with­out mis­pro­nounc­ing more than two thirds of the words. She had a plain­tive way of say­ing, “When papa was rich we did so-and-so,” which was very touch­ing; and her long words were con­sid­ered “per­fectly el­e­gant” by the girls.

Amy was in a fair way to be spoilt; for ev­ery­one pet­ted her, and her small van­i­ties and self­ish­nesses were grow­ing nicely. One thing, how­ever, rather quenched the van­i­ties; she had to wear her cousin’s clothes. Now Florence’s mamma hadn’t a par­ti­cle of taste, and Amy suf­fered deeply at hav­ing to wear a red in­stead of a blue bon­net, un­be­com­ing gowns, and fussy aprons that did not fit. Every­thing was good, well made, and lit­tle worn; but Amy’s artis­tic eyes were much af­flicted, es­pe­cially this win­ter, when her school dress was a dull pur­ple, with yel­low dots, and no trim­ming.

“My only com­fort,” she said to Meg, with tears in her eyes, “is, that mother don’t take tucks in my dresses when­ever I’m naughty, as Maria Parks’ mother does. My dear, it’s re­ally dread­ful; for some­times she is so bad, her frock is up to her knees, and she can’t come to school. When I think of this deg­gerre­da­tion, I feel that I can bear even my flat nose and pur­ple gown, with yel­low sky­rock­ets on it.”

Meg was Amy’s con­fi­dant and mon­i­tor, and, by some strange at­trac­tion of op­po­sites, Jo was gen­tle Beth’s. To Jo alone did the shy child tell her thoughts; and over her big, harum-scarum sis­ter, Beth un­con­sciously ex­er­cised more in­flu­ence than any­one in the fam­ily. The two older girls were a great deal to one an­other, but each took one of the younger into her keep­ing, and watched over her in her own way; “play­ing mother” they called it, and put their sis­ters in the places of dis­carded dolls, with the ma­ter­nal in­stinct of lit­tle women.

“Has any­body got any­thing to tell? It’s been such a dis­mal day I’m re­ally dy­ing for some amuse­ment,” said Meg, as they sat sewing to­gether that evening.

“I had a queer time with aunt to­day, and, as I got the best of it, I’ll tell you about it,” be­gan Jo, who dearly loved to tell sto­ries. “I was read­ing that ev­er­last­ing Belsham, and dron­ing away as I al­ways do, for aunt soon drops off, and then I take out some nice book, and read like fury till she wakes up. I ac­tu­ally made my­self sleepy; and, be­fore she be­gan to nod, I gave such a gape that she asked me what I meant by open­ing my mouth wide enough to take the whole book in at once.

“ ‘I wish I could, and be done with it,’ said I, try­ing not to be saucy.

“Then she gave me a long lec­ture on my sins, and told me to sit and think them over while she just ‘lost’ her­self for a mo­ment. She never finds her­self very soon; so the minute her cap be­gan to bob, like a top-heavy dahlia, I whipped the Vicar of Wake­field out of my pocket, and read away, with one eye on him, and one on aunt. I’d just got to where they all tum­bled into the wa­ter, when I for­got, and laughed out loud. Aunt woke up; and, be­ing more good-na­tured af­ter her nap, told me to read a bit, and show what friv­o­lous work I pre­ferred to the wor­thy and in­struc­tive Belsham. I did my very best, and she liked it, though she only said—

“ ‘I don’t un­der­stand what it’s all about. Go back and be­gin it, child.’

“Back I went, and made the Prim­roses as in­ter­est­ing as ever I could. Once I was wicked enough to stop in a thrilling place, and say meekly, ‘I’m afraid it tires you, ma’am; sha’n’t I stop now?’

“She caught up her knit­ting, which had dropped out of her hands, gave me a sharp look through her specs, and said, in her short way—

“ ‘Fin­ish the chap­ter, and don’t be im­per­ti­nent, miss.’ ”

“Did she own she liked it?” asked Meg.

“Oh, bless you, no! but she let old Belsham rest; and, when I ran back af­ter my gloves this af­ter­noon, there she was, so hard at the Vicar that she didn’t hear me laugh as I danced a jig in the hall, be­cause of the good time com­ing. What a pleas­ant life she might have, if she only chose. I don’t envy her much, in spite of her money, for af­ter all rich peo­ple have about as many wor­ries as poor ones, I think,” added Jo.

“That re­minds me,” said Meg, “that I’ve got some­thing to tell. It isn’t funny, like Jo’s story, but I thought about it a good deal as I came home. At the Kings to­day I found ev­ery­body in a flurry, and one of the chil­dren said that her old­est brother had done some­thing dread­ful, and papa had sent him away. I heard Mrs. King cry­ing and Mr. King talk­ing very loud, and Grace and Ellen turned away their faces when they passed me, so I shouldn’t see how red their eyes were. I didn’t ask any ques­tions, of course; but I felt so sorry for them, and was rather glad I hadn’t any wild broth­ers to do wicked things and dis­grace the fam­ily.”

“I think be­ing dis­graced in school is a great deal tryin­ger than any­thing bad boys can do,” said Amy, shak­ing her head, as if her ex­pe­ri­ence of life had been a deep one. “Susie Perkins came to school to­day with a lovely red car­nelian ring; I wanted it dread­fully, and wished I was her with all my might. Well, she drew a pic­ture of Mr. Davis, with a mon­strous nose and a hump, and the words, ‘Young ladies, my eye is upon you!’ com­ing out of his mouth in a bal­loon thing. We were laugh­ing over it, when all of a sud­den his eye was on us, and he or­dered Susie to bring up her slate. She was parrylized with fright, but she went, and oh, what do you think he did? He took her by the ear, the ear! just fancy how hor­rid!—and led her to the recita­tion plat­form, and made her stand there half an hour, hold­ing that slate so ev­ery­one could see.”

“Didn’t the girls laugh at the pic­ture?” asked Jo, who rel­ished the scrape.

“Laugh? Not one! They sat as still as mice; and Susie cried quarts, I know she did. I didn’t envy her then; for I felt that mil­lions of car­nelian rings wouldn’t have made me happy, af­ter that. I never, never should have got over such a ag­o­niz­ing mor­ti­fi­ca­tion.” And Amy went on with her work, in the proud con­scious­ness of virtue, and the suc­cess­ful ut­ter­ance of two long words in a breath.

“I saw some­thing that I liked this morn­ing, and I meant to tell it at din­ner, but I for­got,” said Beth, putting Jo’s topsy-turvy bas­ket in or­der as she talked. “When I went to get some oys­ters for Han­nah, Mr. Lau­rence was in the fish-shop; but he didn’t see me, for I kept be­hind a bar­rel, and he was busy with Mr. Cut­ter, the fish-man. A poor woman came in, with a pail and a mop, and asked Mr. Cut­ter if he would let her do some scrub­bing for a bit of fish, be­cause she hadn’t any din­ner for her chil­dren, and had been dis­ap­pointed of a day’s work. Mr. Cut­ter was in a hurry, and said ‘No,’ rather crossly; so she was go­ing away, look­ing hun­gry and sorry, when Mr. Lau­rence hooked up a big fish with the crooked end of his cane, and held it out to her. She was so glad and sur­prised, she took it right in her arms, and thanked him over and over. He told her to ‘go along and cook it,’ and she hur­ried off, so happy! Wasn’t it good of him? Oh, she did look so funny, hug­ging the big, slip­pery fish, and hop­ing Mr. Lau­rence’s bed in heaven would be ‘aisy.’ ”

When they had laughed at Beth’s story, they asked their mother for one; and, af­ter a mo­ment’s thought, she said soberly—

“As I sat cut­ting out blue flan­nel jack­ets to­day, at the rooms, I felt very anx­ious about fa­ther, and thought how lonely and help­less we should be, if any­thing hap­pened to him. It was not a wise thing to do; but I kept on wor­ry­ing, till an old man came in, with an or­der for some clothes. He sat down near me, and I be­gan to talk to him; for he looked poor and tired and anx­ious.

“ ‘Have you sons in the army?’ I asked; for the note he brought was not to me.

“ ‘Yes, ma’am. I had four, but two were killed, one is a pris­oner, and I’m go­ing to the other, who is very sick in a Wash­ing­ton hos­pi­tal,’ he an­swered qui­etly.

“ ‘You have done a great deal for your coun­try, sir,’ I said, feel­ing re­spect now, in­stead of pity.

“ ‘Not a mite more than I ought, ma’am. I’d go my­self, if I was any use; as I ain’t, I give my boys, and give ’em free.’

“He spoke so cheer­fully, looked so sin­cere, and seemed so glad to give his all, that I was ashamed of my­self. I’d given one man, and thought it too much, while he gave four, with­out grudg­ing them. I had all my girls to com­fort me at home; and his last son was wait­ing, miles away, to say ‘good­bye’ to him, per­haps! I felt so rich, so happy, think­ing of my bless­ings, that I made him a nice bun­dle, gave him some money, and thanked him heartily for the les­son he had taught me.”

“Tell an­other story, mother—one with a moral to it, like this. I like to think about them af­ter­wards, if they are real, and not too preachy,” said Jo, af­ter a minute’s si­lence.

Mrs. March smiled, and be­gan at once; for she had told sto­ries to this lit­tle au­di­ence for many years, and knew how to please them.

“Once upon a time, there were four girls, who had enough to eat and drink and wear, a good many com­forts and plea­sures, kind friends and par­ents, who loved them dearly, and yet they were not con­tented.” (Here the lis­ten­ers stole sly looks at one an­other, and be­gan to sew dili­gently.) “Th­ese girls were anx­ious to be good, and made many ex­cel­lent res­o­lu­tions; but they did not keep them very well, and were con­stantly say­ing, ‘If we only had this,’ or ‘If we could only do that,’ quite for­get­ting how much they al­ready had, and how many pleas­ant things they ac­tu­ally could do. So they asked an old woman what spell they could use to make them happy, and she said, ‘When you feel dis­con­tented, think over your bless­ings, and be grate­ful.’ ” (Here Jo looked up quickly, as if about to speak, but changed her mind, see­ing that the story was not done yet.)

“Be­ing sen­si­ble girls, they de­cided to try her ad­vice, and soon were sur­prised to see how well off they were. One dis­cov­ered that money couldn’t keep shame and sor­row out of rich peo­ple’s houses; an­other that, though she was poor, she was a great deal hap­pier, with her youth, health, and good spir­its, than a cer­tain fret­ful, fee­ble old lady, who couldn’t en­joy her com­forts; a third that, dis­agree­able as it was to help get din­ner, it was harder still to have to go beg­ging for it; and the fourth, that even car­nelian rings were not so valu­able as good be­hav­ior. So they agreed to stop com­plain­ing, to en­joy the bless­ings al­ready pos­sessed, and try to de­serve them, lest they should be taken away en­tirely, in­stead of in­creased; and I be­lieve they were never dis­ap­pointed, or sorry that they took the old woman’s ad­vice.”

“Now, Marmee, that is very cun­ning of you to turn our own sto­ries against us, and give us a ser­mon in­stead of a ro­mance!” cried Meg.

“I like that kind of ser­mon. It’s the sort fa­ther used to tell us,” said Beth thought­fully, putting the nee­dles straight on Jo’s cush­ion.

“I don’t com­plain near as much as the oth­ers do, and I shall be more care­ful than ever now; for I’ve had warn­ing from Susie’s down­fall,” said Amy morally.

“We needed that les­son, and we won’t for­get it. If we do, you just say to us, as old Chloe did in Un­cle Tom, ‘Tink ob yer mar­cies, chillen! tink ob yer mar­cies!’ ” added Jo, who could not, for the life of her, help get­ting a morsel of fun out of the lit­tle ser­mon, though she took it to heart as much as any of them.

V Being Neighborly

“What in the world are you go­ing to do now, Jo?” asked Meg, one snowy af­ter­noon, as her sis­ter came tramp­ing through the hall, in rub­ber boots, old sack and hood, with a broom in one hand and a shovel in the other.

“Go­ing out for ex­er­cise,” an­swered Jo, with a mis­chievous twin­kle in her eyes.

“I should think two long walks this morn­ing would have been enough! It’s cold and dull out; and I ad­vise you to stay, warm and dry, by the fire, as I do,” said Meg, with a shiver.

“Never take ad­vice! Can’t keep still all day, and, not be­ing a pussy­cat, I don’t like to doze by the fire. I like ad­ven­tures, and I’m go­ing to find some.”

Meg went back to toast her feet and read Ivan­hoe; and Jo be­gan to dig paths with great en­ergy. The snow was light, and with her broom she soon swept a path all round the gar­den, for Beth to walk in when the sun came out; and the in­valid dolls needed air. Now, the gar­den sep­a­rated the Marches’ house from that of Mr. Lau­rence. Both stood in a sub­urb of the city, which was still coun­try-like, with groves and lawns, large gar­dens, and quiet streets. A low hedge parted the two es­tates. On one side was an old, brown house, look­ing rather bare and shabby, robbed of the vines that in sum­mer cov­ered its walls, and the flow­ers which then sur­rounded it. On the other side was a stately stone man­sion, plainly be­to­ken­ing ev­ery sort of com­fort and lux­ury, from the big coach-house and well-kept grounds to the con­ser­va­tory and the glimpses of lovely things one caught be­tween the rich cur­tains. Yet it seemed a lonely, life­less sort of house; for no chil­dren frol­icked on the lawn, no moth­erly face ever smiled at the win­dows, and few peo­ple went in and out, ex­cept the old gen­tle­man and his grand­son.

To Jo’s lively fancy, this fine house seemed a kind of en­chanted palace, full of splen­dors and de­lights, which no one en­joyed. She had long wanted to be­hold these hid­den glo­ries, and to know the “Lau­rence boy,” who looked as if he would like to be known, if he only knew how to be­gin. Since the party, she had been more ea­ger than ever, and had planned many ways of mak­ing friends with him; but he had not been seen lately, and Jo be­gan to think he had gone away, when she one day spied a brown face at an up­per win­dow, look­ing wist­fully down into their gar­den, where Beth and Amy were snow­balling one an­other.

“That boy is suf­fer­ing for so­ci­ety and fun,” she said to her­self. “His grandpa does not know what’s good for him, and keeps him shut up all alone. He needs a party of jolly boys to play with, or some­body young and lively. I’ve a great mind to go over and tell the old gen­tle­man so!”

The idea amused Jo, who liked to do dar­ing things, and was al­ways scan­dal­iz­ing Meg by her queer per­for­mances. The plan of “go­ing over” was not for­got­ten; and when the snowy af­ter­noon came, Jo re­solved to try what could be done. She saw Mr. Lau­rence drive off, and then sal­lied out to dig her way down to the hedge, where she paused, and took a sur­vey. All quiet—cur­tains down at the lower win­dows; ser­vants out of sight, and noth­ing hu­man vis­i­ble but a curly black head lean­ing on a thin hand at the up­per win­dow.

“There he is,” thought Jo, “poor boy! all alone and sick this dis­mal day. It’s a shame! I’ll toss up a snow­ball, and make him look out, and then say a kind word to him.”

Up went a hand­ful of soft snow, and the head turned at once, show­ing a face which lost its list­less look in a minute, as the big eyes bright­ened and the mouth be­gan to smile. Jo nod­ded and laughed, and flour­ished her broom as she called out—

“How do you do? Are you sick?”

Lau­rie opened the win­dow, and croaked out as hoarsely as a raven—

“Bet­ter, thank you. I’ve had a bad cold, and been shut up a week.”

“I’m sorry. What do you amuse your­self with?”

“Noth­ing; it’s as dull as tombs up here.”

“Don’t you read?”

“Not much; they won’t let me.”

“Can’t some­body read to you?”

“Grandpa does, some­times; but my books don’t in­ter­est him, and I hate to ask Brooke all the time.”

“Have some­one come and see you, then.”

“There isn’t any­one I’d like to see. Boys make such a row, and my head is weak.”

“Isn’t there some nice girl who’d read and amuse you? Girls are quiet, and like to play nurse.”

“Don’t know any.”

“You know us,” be­gan Jo, then laughed, and stopped.

“So I do! Will you come, please?” cried Lau­rie.

“I’m not quiet and nice; but I’ll come, if mother will let me. I’ll go ask her. Shut that win­dow, like a good boy, and wait till I come.”

With that, Jo shoul­dered her broom and marched into the house, won­der­ing what they would all say to her. Lau­rie was in a flut­ter of ex­cite­ment at the idea of hav­ing com­pany, and flew about to get ready; for, as Mrs. March said, he was “a lit­tle gen­tle­man,” and did honor to the com­ing guest by brush­ing his curly pate, putting on a fresh col­lar, and try­ing to tidy up the room, which, in spite of half a dozen ser­vants, was any­thing but neat. Presently there came a loud ring, then a de­cided voice, ask­ing for “Mr. Lau­rie,” and a sur­prised-look­ing ser­vant came run­ning up to an­nounce a young lady.

“All right, show her up, it’s Miss Jo,” said Lau­rie, go­ing to the door of his lit­tle par­lor to meet Jo, who ap­peared, look­ing rosy and kind and quite at her ease, with a cov­ered dish in one hand and Beth’s three kit­tens in the other.

“Here I am, bag and bag­gage,” she said briskly. “Mother sent her love, and was glad if I could do any­thing for you. Meg wanted me to bring some of her blanc­mange; she makes it very nicely, and Beth thought her cats would be com­fort­ing. I knew you’d laugh at them, but I couldn’t refuse, she was so anx­ious to do some­thing.”

It so hap­pened that Beth’s funny loan was just the thing; for, in laugh­ing over the kits, Lau­rie for­got his bash­ful­ness, and grew so­cia­ble at once.

“That looks too pretty to eat,” he said, smil­ing with plea­sure, as Jo un­cov­ered the dish, and showed the blanc­mange, sur­rounded by a gar­land of green leaves, and the scar­let flow­ers of Amy’s pet gera­nium.

“It isn’t any­thing, only they all felt kindly, and wanted to show it. Tell the girl to put it away for your tea: it’s so sim­ple, you can eat it; and, be­ing soft, it will slip down with­out hurt­ing your sore throat. What a cosy room this is!”

“It might be if it was kept nice; but the maids are lazy, and I don’t know how to make them mind. It wor­ries me, though.”

“I’ll right it up in two min­utes; for it only needs to have the hearth brushed, so—and the things made straight on the man­tel­piece so—and the books put here, and the bot­tles there, and your sofa turned from the light, and the pil­lows plumped up a bit. Now, then, you’re fixed.”

And so he was; for, as she laughed and talked, Jo had whisked things into place, and given quite a dif­fer­ent air to the room. Lau­rie watched her in re­spect­ful si­lence; and when she beck­oned him to his sofa, he sat down with a sigh of sat­is­fac­tion, say­ing grate­fully—

“How kind you are! Yes, that’s what it wanted. Now please take the big chair, and let me do some­thing to amuse my com­pany.”

“No; I came to amuse you. Shall I read aloud?” and Jo looked af­fec­tion­ately to­ward some invit­ing books near by.

“Thank you; I’ve read all those, and if you don’t mind, I’d rather talk,” an­swered Lau­rie.

“Not a bit; I’ll talk all day if you’ll only set me go­ing. Beth says I never know when to stop.”

“Is Beth the rosy one, who stays at home a good deal, and some­times goes out with a lit­tle bas­ket?” asked Lau­rie, with in­ter­est.

“Yes, that’s Beth; she’s my girl, and a reg­u­lar good one she is, too.”

“The pretty one is Meg, and the curly-haired one is Amy, I be­lieve?”

“How did you find that out?”

Lau­rie col­ored up, but an­swered frankly, “Why, you see, I of­ten hear you call­ing to one an­other, and when I’m alone up here, I can’t help look­ing over at your house, you al­ways seem to be hav­ing such good times. I beg your par­don for be­ing so rude, but some­times you for­get to put down the cur­tain at the win­dow where the flow­ers are; and when the lamps are lighted, it’s like look­ing at a pic­ture to see the fire, and you all round the ta­ble with your mother; her face is right op­po­site, and it looks so sweet be­hind the flow­ers, I can’t help watch­ing it. I haven’t got any mother, you know;” and Lau­rie poked the fire to hide a lit­tle twitch­ing of the lips that he could not con­trol.

The soli­tary, hun­gry look in his eyes went straight to Jo’s warm heart. She had been so sim­ply taught that there was no non­sense in her head, and at fif­teen she was as in­no­cent and frank as any child. Lau­rie was sick and lonely; and, feel­ing how rich she was in home-love and hap­pi­ness, she gladly tried to share it with him. Her face was very friendly and her sharp voice un­usu­ally gen­tle as she said—

“We’ll never draw that cur­tain any more, and I give you leave to look as much as you like. I just wish, though, in­stead of peep­ing, you’d come over and see us. Mother is so splen­did, she’d do you heaps of good, and Beth would sing to you if I begged her to, and Amy would dance; Meg and I would make you laugh over our funny stage prop­er­ties, and we’d have jolly times. Wouldn’t your grandpa let you?”

“I think he would, if your mother asked him. He’s very kind, though he does not look so; and he lets me do what I like, pretty much, only he’s afraid I might be a bother to strangers,” be­gan Lau­rie, bright­en­ing more and more.

“We are not strangers, we are neigh­bors, and you needn’t think you’d be a bother. We want to know you, and I’ve been try­ing to do it this ever so long. We haven’t been here a great while, you know, but we have got ac­quainted with all our neigh­bors but you.”

“You see grandpa lives among his books, and doesn’t mind much what hap­pens out­side. Mr. Brooke, my tu­tor, doesn’t stay here, you know, and I have no one to go about with me, so I just stop at home and get on as I can.”

“That’s bad. You ought to make an ef­fort, and go vis­it­ing ev­ery­where you are asked; then you’ll have plenty of friends, and pleas­ant places to go to. Never mind be­ing bash­ful; it won’t last long if you keep go­ing.”

Lau­rie turned red again, but wasn’t of­fended at be­ing ac­cused of bash­ful­ness; for there was so much good­will in Jo, it was im­pos­si­ble not to take her blunt speeches as kindly as they were meant.

“Do you like your school?” asked the boy, chang­ing the sub­ject, af­ter a lit­tle pause, dur­ing which he stared at the fire, and Jo looked about her, well pleased.

“Don’t go to school; I’m a busi­ness man—girl, I mean. I go to wait on my great-aunt, and a dear, cross old soul she is, too,” an­swered Jo.

Lau­rie opened his mouth to ask an­other ques­tion; but re­mem­ber­ing just in time that it wasn’t man­ners to make too many in­quiries into peo­ple’s af­fairs, he shut it again, and looked un­com­fort­able. Jo liked his good breed­ing, and didn’t mind hav­ing a laugh at Aunt March, so she gave him a lively de­scrip­tion of the fid­gety old lady, her fat poo­dle, the par­rot that talked Span­ish, and the li­brary where she rev­elled. Lau­rie en­joyed that im­mensely; and when she told about the prim old gen­tle­man who came once to woo Aunt March, and, in the mid­dle of a fine speech, how Poll had tweaked his wig off to his great dis­may, the boy lay back and laughed till the tears ran down his cheeks, and a maid popped her head in to see what was the mat­ter.

“Oh! that does me no end of good. Tell on, please,” he said, tak­ing his face out of the sofa-cush­ion, red and shin­ing with mer­ri­ment.

Much elated with her suc­cess, Jo did “tell on,” all about their plays and plans, their hopes and fears for fa­ther, and the most in­ter­est­ing events of the lit­tle world in which the sis­ters lived. Then they got to talk­ing about books; and to Jo’s de­light, she found that Lau­rie loved them as well as she did, and had read even more than her­self.

“If you like them so much, come down and see ours. Grandpa is out, so you needn’t be afraid,” said Lau­rie, get­ting up.

“I’m not afraid of any­thing,” re­turned Jo, with a toss of the head.

“I don’t be­lieve you are!” ex­claimed the boy, look­ing at her with much ad­mi­ra­tion, though he pri­vately thought she would have good rea­son to be a tri­fle afraid of the old gen­tle­man, if she met him in some of his moods.

The at­mos­phere of the whole house be­ing sum­mer-like, Lau­rie led the way from room to room, let­ting Jo stop to ex­am­ine what­ever struck her fancy; and so at last they came to the li­brary, where she clapped her hands, and pranced, as she al­ways did when es­pe­cially de­lighted. It was lined with books, and there were pic­tures and stat­ues, and dis­tract­ing lit­tle cab­i­nets full of coins and cu­riosi­ties, and sleepy-hol­low chairs, and queer ta­bles, and bronzes; and, best of all, a great open fire­place, with quaint tiles all round it.

“What rich­ness!” sighed Jo, sink­ing into the depth of a vel­vet chair, and gaz­ing about her with an air of in­tense sat­is­fac­tion. “Theodore Lau­rence, you ought to be the hap­pi­est boy in the world,” she added im­pres­sively.

“A fel­low can’t live on books,” said Lau­rie, shak­ing his head, as he perched on a ta­ble op­po­site.

Be­fore he could say more, a bell rung, and Jo flew up, ex­claim­ing with alarm, “Mercy me! it’s your grandpa!”

“Well, what if it is? You are not afraid of any­thing, you know,” re­turned the boy, look­ing wicked.

“I think I am a lit­tle bit afraid of him, but I don’t know why I should be. Marmee said I might come, and I don’t think you’re any the worse for it,” said Jo, com­pos­ing her­self, though she kept her eyes on the door.

“I’m a great deal bet­ter for it, and ever so much obliged. I’m only afraid you are very tired talk­ing to me; it was so pleas­ant, I couldn’t bear to stop,” said Lau­rie grate­fully.

“The doc­tor to see you, sir,” and the maid beck­oned as she spoke.

“Would you mind if I left you for a minute? I sup­pose I must see him,” said Lau­rie.

“Don’t mind me. I’m as happy as a cricket here,” an­swered Jo.

Lau­rie went away, and his guest amused her­self in her own way. She was stand­ing be­fore a fine por­trait of the old gen­tle­man, when the door opened again, and, with­out turn­ing, she said de­cid­edly, “I’m sure now that I shouldn’t be afraid of him, for he’s got kind eyes, though his mouth is grim, and he looks as if he had a tremen­dous will of his own. He isn’t as hand­some as my grand­fa­ther, but I like him.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” said a gruff voice be­hind her; and there, to her great dis­may, stood old Mr. Lau­rence.

Poor Jo blushed till she couldn’t blush any red­der, and her heart be­gan to beat un­com­fort­ably fast as she thought what she had said. For a minute a wild de­sire to run away pos­sessed her; but that was cow­ardly, and the girls would laugh at her: so she re­solved to stay, and get out of the scrape as she could. A sec­ond look showed her that the liv­ing eyes, un­der the bushy gray eye­brows, were kinder even than the painted ones; and there was a sly twin­kle in them, which less­ened her fear a good deal. The gruff voice was gruffer than ever, as the old gen­tle­man said abruptly, af­ter that dread­ful pause, “So you’re not afraid of me, hey?”

“Not much, sir.”

“And you don’t think me as hand­some as your grand­fa­ther?”

“Not quite, sir.”

“And I’ve got a tremen­dous will, have I?”

“I only said I thought so.”

“But you like me, in spite of it?”

“Yes, I do, sir.”

That an­swer pleased the old gen­tle­man; he gave a short laugh, shook hands with her, and, putting his fin­ger un­der her chin, turned up her face, ex­am­ined it gravely, and let it go, say­ing, with a nod, “You’ve got your grand­fa­ther’s spirit, if you haven’t his face. He was a fine man, my dear; but, what is bet­ter, he was a brave and an hon­est one, and I was proud to be his friend.”

“Thank you, sir;” and Jo was quite com­fort­able af­ter that, for it suited her ex­actly.

“What have you been do­ing to this boy of mine, hey?” was the next ques­tion, sharply put.

“Only try­ing to be neigh­borly, sir;” and Jo told how her visit came about.

“You think he needs cheer­ing up a bit, do you?”

“Yes, sir; he seems a lit­tle lonely, and young folks would do him good per­haps. We are only girls, but we should be glad to help if we could, for we don’t for­get the splen­did Christ­mas present you sent us,” said Jo ea­gerly.

“Tut, tut, tut! that was the boy’s af­fair. How is the poor woman?”

“Do­ing nicely, sir;” and off went Jo, talk­ing very fast, as she told all about the Hum­mels, in whom her mother had in­ter­ested richer friends than they were.

“Just her fa­ther’s way of do­ing good. I shall come and see your mother some fine day. Tell her so. There’s the tea-bell; we have it early, on the boy’s ac­count. Come down, and go on be­ing neigh­borly.”

“If you’d like to have me, sir.”

“Shouldn’t ask you, if I didn’t;” and Mr. Lau­rence of­fered her his arm with old-fash­ioned cour­tesy.

“What would Meg say to this?” thought Jo, as she was marched away, while her eyes danced with fun as she imag­ined her­self telling the story at home.

“Hey! Why, what the dick­ens has come to the fel­low?” said the old gen­tle­man, as Lau­rie came run­ning down stairs, and brought up with a start of sur­prise at the as­ton­ish­ing sight of Jo arm-in-arm with his re­doubtable grand­fa­ther.

“I didn’t know you’d come, sir,” he be­gan, as Jo gave him a tri­umphant lit­tle glance.

“That’s ev­i­dent, by the way you racket down stairs. Come to your tea, sir, and be­have like a gen­tle­man;” and hav­ing pulled the boy’s hair by way of a ca­ress, Mr. Lau­rence walked on, while Lau­rie went through a se­ries of comic evo­lu­tions be­hind their backs, which nearly pro­duced an ex­plo­sion of laugh­ter from Jo.

The old gen­tle­man did not say much as he drank his four cups of tea, but he watched the young peo­ple, who soon chat­ted away like old friends, and the change in his grand­son did not es­cape him. There was color, light, and life in the boy’s face now, vi­vac­ity in his man­ner, and gen­uine mer­ri­ment in his laugh.

“She’s right; the lad is lonely. I’ll see what these lit­tle girls can do for him,” thought Mr. Lau­rence, as he looked and lis­tened. He liked Jo, for her odd, blunt ways suited him; and she seemed to un­der­stand the boy al­most as well as if she had been one her­self.

If the Lau­rences had been what Jo called “prim and poky,” she would not have got on at all, for such peo­ple al­ways made her shy and awk­ward; but find­ing them free and easy, she was so her­self, and made a good im­pres­sion. When they rose she pro­posed to go, but Lau­rie said he had some­thing more to show her, and took her away to the con­ser­va­tory, which had been lighted for her ben­e­fit. It seemed quite fairy­like to Jo, as she went up and down the walks, en­joy­ing the bloom­ing walls on ei­ther side, the soft light, the damp sweet air, and the won­der­ful vines and trees that hung above her—while her new friend cut the finest flow­ers till his hands were full; then he tied them up, say­ing, with the happy look Jo liked to see, “Please give these to your mother, and tell her I like the medicine she sent me very much.”

They found Mr. Lau­rence stand­ing be­fore the fire in the great draw­ing-room, but Jo’s at­ten­tion was en­tirely ab­sorbed by a grand pi­ano, which stood open.

“Do you play?” she asked, turn­ing to Lau­rie with a re­spect­ful ex­pres­sion.

“Some­times,” he an­swered mod­estly.

“Please do now. I want to hear it, so I can tell Beth.”

“Won’t you first?”

“Don’t know how; too stupid to learn, but I love mu­sic dearly.”

So Lau­rie played, and Jo lis­tened, with her nose lux­u­ri­ously buried in he­liotrope and tea-roses. Her re­spect and re­gard for the “Lau­rence boy” in­creased very much, for he played re­mark­ably well, and didn’t put on any airs. She wished Beth could hear him, but she did not say so; only praised him till he was quite abashed, and his grand­fa­ther came to the res­cue. “That will do, that will do, young lady. Too many sug­arplums are not good for him. His mu­sic isn’t bad, but I hope he will do as well in more im­por­tant things. Go­ing? Well, I’m much obliged to you, and I hope you’ll come again. My re­spects to your mother. Good night, Doc­tor Jo.”

He shook hands kindly, but looked as if some­thing did not please him. When they got into the hall, Jo asked Lau­rie if she had said any­thing amiss. He shook his head.

“No, it was me; he doesn’t like to hear me play.”

“Why not?”

“I’ll tell you some day. John is go­ing home with you, as I can’t.”

“No need of that; I am not a young lady, and it’s only a step. Take care of your­self, won’t you?”

“Yes; but you will come again, I hope?”

“If you prom­ise to come and see us af­ter you are well.”

“I will.”

“Good night, Lau­rie!”

“Good night, Jo, good night!”

When all the af­ter­noon’s ad­ven­tures had been told, the fam­ily felt in­clined to go vis­it­ing in a body, for each found some­thing very at­trac­tive in the big house on the other side of the hedge. Mrs. March wanted to talk of her fa­ther with the old man who had not for­got­ten him; Meg longed to walk in the con­ser­va­tory; Beth sighed for the grand pi­ano; and Amy was ea­ger to see the fine pic­tures and stat­ues.

“Mother, why didn’t Mr. Lau­rence like to have Lau­rie play?” asked Jo, who was of an in­quir­ing dis­po­si­tion.

“I am not sure, but I think it was be­cause his son, Lau­rie’s fa­ther, mar­ried an Ital­ian lady, a mu­si­cian, which dis­pleased the old man, who is very proud. The lady was good and lovely and ac­com­plished, but he did not like her, and never saw his son af­ter he mar­ried. They both died when Lau­rie was a lit­tle child, and then his grand­fa­ther took him home. I fancy the boy, who was born in Italy, is not very strong, and the old man is afraid of los­ing him, which makes him so care­ful. Lau­rie comes nat­u­rally by his love of mu­sic, for he is like his mother, and I dare say his grand­fa­ther fears that he may want to be a mu­si­cian; at any rate, his skill re­minds him of the woman he did not like, and so he ‘glow­ered,’ as Jo said.”

“Dear me, how ro­man­tic!” ex­claimed Meg.

“How silly!” said Jo. “Let him be a mu­si­cian, if he wants to, and not plague his life out send­ing him to col­lege, when he hates to go.”

“That’s why he has such hand­some black eyes and pretty man­ners, I sup­pose. Ital­ians are al­ways nice,” said Meg, who was a lit­tle sen­ti­men­tal.

“What do you know about his eyes and his man­ners? You never spoke to him, hardly,” cried Jo, who was not sen­ti­men­tal.

“I saw him at the party, and what you tell shows that he knows how to be­have. That was a nice lit­tle speech about the medicine mother sent him.”

“He meant the blanc­mange, I sup­pose.”

“How stupid you are, child! He meant you, of course.”

“Did he?” and Jo opened her eyes as if it had never oc­curred to her be­fore.

“I never saw such a girl! You don’t know a com­pli­ment when you get it,” said Meg, with the air of a young lady who knew all about the mat­ter.

“I think they are great non­sense, and I’ll thank you not to be silly, and spoil my fun. Lau­rie’s a nice boy, and I like him, and I won’t have any sen­ti­men­tal stuff about com­pli­ments and such rub­bish. We’ll all be good to him, be­cause he hasn’t got any mother, and he may come over and see us, mayn’t he, Marmee?”

“Yes, Jo, your lit­tle friend is very wel­come, and I hope Meg will re­mem­ber that chil­dren should be chil­dren as long as they can.”

“I don’t call my­self a child, and I’m not in my teens yet,” ob­served Amy. “What do you say, Beth?”

“I was think­ing about our ‘Pil­grim’s Progress,’ ” an­swered Beth, who had not heard a word. “How we got out of the Slough and through the Wicket Gate by re­solv­ing to be good, and up the steep hill by try­ing; and that maybe the house over there, full of splen­did things, is go­ing to be our Palace Beau­ti­ful.”

“We have got to get by the li­ons, first,” said Jo, as if she rather liked the prospect.

VI Beth Finds the Palace Beautiful

The big house did prove a Palace Beau­ti­ful, though it took some time for all to get in, and Beth found it very hard to pass the li­ons. Old Mr. Lau­rence was the big­gest one; but af­ter he had called, said some­thing funny or kind to each one of the girls, and talked over old times with their mother, no­body felt much afraid of him, ex­cept timid Beth. The other lion was the fact that they were poor and Lau­rie rich; for this made them shy of ac­cept­ing fa­vors which they could not re­turn. But, af­ter a while, they found that he con­sid­ered them the bene­fac­tors, and could not do enough to show how grate­ful he was for Mrs. March’s moth­erly wel­come, their cheer­ful so­ci­ety, and the com­fort he took in that hum­ble home of theirs. So they soon for­got their pride, and in­ter­changed kind­nesses with­out stop­ping to think which was the greater.

All sorts of pleas­ant things hap­pened about that time; for the new friend­ship flour­ished like grass in spring. Every­one liked Lau­rie, and he pri­vately in­formed his tu­tor that “the Marches were reg­u­larly splen­did girls.” With the de­light­ful en­thu­si­asm of youth, they took the soli­tary boy into their midst, and made much of him, and he found some­thing very charm­ing in the in­no­cent com­pan­ion­ship of these sim­ple-hearted girls. Never hav­ing known mother or sis­ters, he was quick to feel the in­flu­ences they brought about him; and their busy, lively ways made him ashamed of the in­do­lent life he led. He was tired of books, and found peo­ple so in­ter­est­ing now that Mr. Brooke was obliged to make very un­sat­is­fac­tory re­ports; for Lau­rie was al­ways play­ing tru­ant, and run­ning over to the Marches.

“Never mind; let him take a hol­i­day, and make it up af­ter­wards,” said the old gen­tle­man. “The good lady next door says he is study­ing too hard, and needs young so­ci­ety, amuse­ment, and ex­er­cise. I sus­pect she is right, and that I’ve been cod­dling the fel­low as if I’d been his grand­mother. Let him do what he likes, as long as he is happy. He can’t get into mis­chief in that lit­tle nun­nery over there; and Mrs. March is do­ing more for him than we can.”

What good times they had, to be sure! Such plays and tableaux, such sleigh-rides and skat­ing frol­ics, such pleas­ant evenings in the old par­lor, and now and then such gay lit­tle par­ties at the great house. Meg could walk in the con­ser­va­tory when­ever she liked, and revel in bou­quets; Jo browsed over the new li­brary vo­ra­ciously, and con­vulsed the old gen­tle­man with her crit­i­cisms; Amy copied pic­tures, and en­joyed beauty to her heart’s con­tent; and Lau­rie played “lord of the manor” in the most de­light­ful style.

But Beth, though yearn­ing for the grand pi­ano, could not pluck up courage to go to the “Man­sion of Bliss,” as Meg called it. She went once with Jo; but the old gen­tle­man, not be­ing aware of her in­fir­mity, stared at her so hard from un­der his heavy eye­brows, and said “Hey!” so loud, that he fright­ened her so much her “feet chat­tered on the floor,” she told her mother; and she ran away, declar­ing she would never go there any more, not even for the dear pi­ano. No per­sua­sions or en­tice­ments could over­come her fear, till, the fact com­ing to Mr. Lau­rence’s ear in some mys­te­ri­ous way, he set about mend­ing mat­ters. Dur­ing one of the brief calls he made, he art­fully led the con­ver­sa­tion to mu­sic, and talked away about great singers whom he had seen, fine or­gans he had heard, and told such charm­ing anec­dotes that Beth found it im­pos­si­ble to stay in her dis­tant cor­ner, but crept nearer and nearer, as if fas­ci­nated. At the back of his chair she stopped, and stood lis­ten­ing, with her great eyes wide open, and her cheeks red with the ex­cite­ment of this un­usual per­for­mance. Tak­ing no more no­tice of her than if she had been a fly, Mr. Lau­rence talked on about Lau­rie’s lessons and teach­ers; and presently, as if the idea had just oc­curred to him, he said to Mrs. March—

“The boy ne­glects his mu­sic now, and I’m glad of it, for he was get­ting too fond of it. But the pi­ano suf­fers for want of use. Wouldn’t some of your girls like to run over, and prac­tise on it now and then, just to keep it in tune, you know, ma’am?”

Beth took a step for­ward, and pressed her hands tightly to­gether to keep from clap­ping them, for this was an ir­re­sistible temp­ta­tion; and the thought of prac­tis­ing on that splen­did in­stru­ment quite took her breath away. Be­fore Mrs. March could re­ply, Mr. Lau­rence went on with an odd lit­tle nod and smile—

“They needn’t see or speak to any­one, but run in at any time; for I’m shut up in my study at the other end of the house, Lau­rie is out a great deal, and the ser­vants are never near the draw­ing-room af­ter nine o’clock.”

Here he rose, as if go­ing, and Beth made up her mind to speak, for that last ar­range­ment left noth­ing to be de­sired. “Please tell the young ladies what I say; and if they don’t care to come, why, never mind.” Here a lit­tle hand slipped into his, and Beth looked up at him with a face full of grat­i­tude, as she said, in her earnest yet timid way—

“O sir, they do care, very, very much!”

“Are you the mu­si­cal girl?” he asked, with­out any star­tling “Hey!” as he looked down at her very kindly.

“I’m Beth. I love it dearly, and I’ll come, if you are quite sure no­body will hear me—and be dis­turbed,” she added, fear­ing to be rude, and trem­bling at her own bold­ness as she spoke.

“Not a soul, my dear. The house is empty half the day; so come, and drum away as much as you like, and I shall be obliged to you.”

“How kind you are, sir!”

Beth blushed like a rose un­der the friendly look he wore; but she was not fright­ened now, and gave the big hand a grate­ful squeeze, be­cause she had no words to thank him for the pre­cious gift he had given her. The old gen­tle­man softly stroked the hair off her fore­head, and, stoop­ing down, he kissed her, say­ing, in a tone few peo­ple ever heard—

“I had a lit­tle girl once, with eyes like these. God bless you, my dear! Good day, madam;” and away he went, in a great hurry.

Beth had a rap­ture with her mother, and then rushed up to im­part the glo­ri­ous news to her fam­ily of in­valids, as the girls were not at home. How blithely she sung that evening, and how they all laughed at her, be­cause she woke Amy in the night by play­ing the pi­ano on her face in her sleep. Next day, hav­ing seen both the old and young gen­tle­man out of the house, Beth, af­ter two or three re­treats, fairly got in at the side-door, and made her way, as noise­lessly as any mouse, to the draw­ing-room, where her idol stood. Quite by ac­ci­dent, of course, some pretty, easy mu­sic lay on the pi­ano; and, with trem­bling fin­gers, and fre­quent stops to lis­ten and look about, Beth at last touched the great in­stru­ment, and straight­way for­got her fear, her­self, and ev­ery­thing else but the un­speak­able de­light which the mu­sic gave her, for it was like the voice of a beloved friend.

She stayed till Han­nah came to take her home to din­ner; but she had no ap­petite, and could only sit and smile upon ev­ery­one in a gen­eral state of beat­i­tude.

After that, the lit­tle brown hood slipped through the hedge nearly ev­ery day, and the great draw­ing-room was haunted by a tune­ful spirit that came and went un­seen. She never knew that Mr. Lau­rence of­ten opened his study-door to hear the old-fash­ioned airs he liked; she never saw Lau­rie mount guard in the hall to warn the ser­vants away; she never sus­pected that the ex­er­cise-books and new songs which she found in the rack were put there for her es­pe­cial ben­e­fit; and when he talked to her about mu­sic at home, she only thought how kind he was to tell things that helped her so much. So she en­joyed her­self heartily, and found, what isn’t al­ways the case, that her granted wish was all she had hoped. Per­haps it was be­cause she was so grate­ful for this bless­ing that a greater was given her; at any rate, she de­served both.

“Mother, I’m go­ing to work Mr. Lau­rence a pair of slip­pers. He is so kind to me, I must thank him, and I don’t know any other way. Can I do it?” asked Beth, a few weeks af­ter that event­ful call of his.

“Yes, dear. It will please him very much, and be a nice way of thank­ing him. The girls will help you about them, and I will pay for the mak­ing up,” replied Mrs. March, who took pe­cu­liar plea­sure in grant­ing Beth’s re­quests, be­cause she so sel­dom asked any­thing for her­self.

After many se­ri­ous dis­cus­sions with Meg and Jo, the pat­tern was cho­sen, the ma­te­ri­als bought, and the slip­pers be­gun. A clus­ter of grave yet cheer­ful pan­sies, on a deeper pur­ple ground, was pro­nounced very ap­pro­pri­ate and pretty; and Beth worked away early and late, with oc­ca­sional lifts over hard parts. She was a nim­ble lit­tle needle­woman, and they were fin­ished be­fore any­one got tired of them. Then she wrote a very short, sim­ple note, and, with Lau­rie’s help, got them smug­gled on to the study-ta­ble one morn­ing be­fore the old gen­tle­man was up.

When this ex­cite­ment was over, Beth waited to see what would hap­pen. All that day passed, and a part of the next, be­fore any ac­knowl­edg­ment ar­rived, and she was be­gin­ning to fear she had of­fended her crotch­ety friend. On the af­ter­noon of the sec­ond day, she went out to do an er­rand, and give poor Joanna, the in­valid doll, her daily ex­er­cise. As she came up the street, on her re­turn, she saw three, yes, four, heads pop­ping in and out of the par­lor win­dows, and the mo­ment they saw her, sev­eral hands were waved, and sev­eral joy­ful voices screamed—

“Here’s a let­ter from the old gen­tle­man! Come quick, and read it!”

“O Beth, he’s sent you—” be­gan Amy, ges­tic­u­lat­ing with un­seemly en­ergy; but she got no fur­ther, for Jo quenched her by slam­ming down the win­dow.

Beth hur­ried on in a flut­ter of sus­pense. At the door, her sis­ters seized and bore her to the par­lor in a tri­umphal pro­ces­sion, all point­ing, and all say­ing at once, “Look there! look there!” Beth did look, and turned pale with de­light and sur­prise; for there stood a lit­tle cab­i­net-pi­ano, with a let­ter ly­ing on the glossy lid, di­rected, like a sign­board, to “Miss El­iz­a­beth March.”

“For me?” gasped Beth, hold­ing on to Jo, and feel­ing as if she should tum­ble down, it was such an over­whelm­ing thing al­to­gether.

“Yes; all for you, my pre­cious! Isn’t it splen­did of him? Don’t you think he’s the dear­est old man in the world? Here’s the key in the let­ter. We didn’t open it, but we are dy­ing to know what he says,” cried Jo, hug­ging her sis­ter, and of­fer­ing the note.

“You read it! I can’t, I feel so queer! Oh, it is too lovely!” and Beth hid her face in Jo’s apron, quite up­set by her present.

Jo opened the pa­per, and be­gan to laugh, for the first words she saw were—

“Miss March:

“Dear Madam—”

“How nice it sounds! I wish some­one would write to me so!” said Amy, who thought the old-fash­ioned ad­dress very el­e­gant.

“ ‘I have had many pairs of slip­pers in my life, but I never had any that suited me so well as yours,’ ” con­tin­ued Jo. “ ‘Heart’s-ease is my fa­vorite flower, and these will al­ways re­mind me of the gen­tle giver. I like to pay my debts; so I know you will al­low “the old gen­tle­man” to send you some­thing which once be­longed to the lit­tle grand­daugh­ter he lost. With hearty thanks and best wishes, I re­main—

“ ‘Your grate­ful friend and hum­ble ser­vant,

“ ‘James Lau­rence.’ ”

“There, Beth, that’s an honor to be proud of, I’m sure! Lau­rie told me how fond Mr. Lau­rence used to be of the child who died, and how he kept all her lit­tle things care­fully. Just think, he’s given you her pi­ano. That comes of hav­ing big blue eyes and lov­ing mu­sic,” said Jo, try­ing to soothe Beth, who trem­bled, and looked more ex­cited than she had ever been be­fore.

“See the cun­ning brack­ets to hold can­dles, and the nice green silk, puck­ered up, with a gold rose in the mid­dle, and the pretty rack and stool, all com­plete,” added Meg, open­ing the in­stru­ment and dis­play­ing its beau­ties.

“ ‘Your hum­ble ser­vant, James Lau­rence’; only think of his writ­ing that to you. I’ll tell the girls. They’ll think it’s splen­did,” said Amy, much im­pressed by the note.

“Try it, honey. Let’s hear the sound of the baby-pi­anny,” said Han­nah, who al­ways took a share in the fam­ily joys and sor­rows.

So Beth tried it; and ev­ery­one pro­nounced it the most re­mark­able pi­ano ever heard. It had ev­i­dently been newly tuned and put in ap­ple-pie or­der; but, per­fect as it was, I think the real charm of it lay in the hap­pi­est of all happy faces which leaned over it, as Beth lov­ingly touched the beau­ti­ful black and white keys and pressed the bright ped­als.

“You’ll have to go and thank him,” said Jo, by way of a joke; for the idea of the child’s re­ally go­ing never en­tered her head.

“Yes, I mean to. I guess I’ll go now, be­fore I get fright­ened think­ing about it.” And, to the ut­ter amaze­ment of the as­sem­bled fam­ily, Beth walked de­lib­er­ately down the gar­den, through the hedge, and in at the Lau­rences’ door.

“Well, I wish I may die if it ain’t the queer­est thing I ever see! The pi­anny has turned her head! She’d never have gone in her right mind,” cried Han­nah, star­ing af­ter her, while the girls were ren­dered quite speech­less by the mir­a­cle.

They would have been still more amazed if they had seen what Beth did af­ter­ward. If you will be­lieve me, she went and knocked at the study-door be­fore she gave her­self time to think; and when a gruff voice called out, “Come in!” she did go in, right up to Mr. Lau­rence, who looked quite taken aback, and held out her hand, say­ing, with only a small qua­ver in her voice, “I came to thank you, sir, for—” But she didn’t fin­ish; for he looked so friendly that she for­got her speech, and, only re­mem­ber­ing that he had lost the lit­tle girl he loved, she put both arms round his neck, and kissed him.

If the roof of the house had sud­denly flown off, the old gen­tle­man wouldn’t have been more as­ton­ished; but he liked it—oh, dear, yes, he liked it amaz­ingly!—and was so touched and pleased by that con­fid­ing lit­tle kiss that all his crusti­ness van­ished; and he just set her on his knee, and laid his wrin­kled cheek against her rosy one, feel­ing as if he had got his own lit­tle grand­daugh­ter back again. Beth ceased to fear him from that mo­ment, and sat there talk­ing to him as cosily as if she had known him all her life; for love casts out fear, and grat­i­tude can con­quer pride. When she went home, he walked with her to her own gate, shook hands cor­dially, and touched his hat as he marched back again, look­ing very stately and erect, like a hand­some, sol­dierly old gen­tle­man, as he was.

When the girls saw that per­for­mance, Jo be­gan to dance a jig, by way of ex­press­ing her sat­is­fac­tion; Amy nearly fell out of the win­dow in her sur­prise; and Meg ex­claimed, with up­lifted hands, “Well, I do be­lieve the world is com­ing to an end!”

VII Amy’s Valley of Humiliation

“That boy is a per­fect Cy­clops, isn’t he?” said Amy, one day, as Lau­rie clat­tered by on horse­back, with a flour­ish of his whip as he passed.

“How dare you say so, when he’s got both his eyes? and very hand­some ones they are, too,” cried Jo, who re­sented any slight­ing re­marks about her friend.

“I didn’t say any­thing about his eyes, and I don’t see why you need fire up when I ad­mire his rid­ing.”

“Oh, my good­ness! that lit­tle goose means a cen­taur, and she called him a Cy­clops,” ex­claimed Jo, with a burst of laugh­ter.

“You needn’t be so rude; it’s only a ‘lapse of lingy,’ as Mr. Davis says,” re­torted Amy, fin­ish­ing Jo with her Latin. “I just wish I had a lit­tle of the money Lau­rie spends on that horse,” she added, as if to her­self, yet hop­ing her sis­ters would hear.

“Why?” asked Meg kindly, for Jo had gone off in an­other laugh at Amy’s sec­ond blun­der.

“I need it so much; I’m dread­fully in debt, and it won’t be my turn to have the rag-money for a month.”

“In debt, Amy? What do you mean?” and Meg looked sober.

“Why, I owe at least a dozen pick­led limes, and I can’t pay them, you know, till I have money, for Marmee for­bade my hav­ing any­thing charged at the shop.”

“Tell me all about it. Are limes the fash­ion now? It used to be prick­ing bits of rub­ber to make balls;” and Meg tried to keep her coun­te­nance, Amy looked so grave and im­por­tant.

“Why, you see, the girls are al­ways buy­ing them, and un­less you want to be thought mean, you must do it, too. It’s noth­ing but limes now, for ev­ery­one is suck­ing them in their desks in school-time, and trad­ing them off for pen­cils, bead-rings, pa­per dolls, or some­thing else, at re­cess. If one girl likes an­other, she gives her a lime; if she’s mad with her, she eats one be­fore her face, and don’t of­fer even a suck. They treat by turns; and I’ve had ever so many, but haven’t re­turned them; and I ought, for they are debts of honor, you know.”

“How much will pay them off, and re­store your credit?” asked Meg, tak­ing out her purse.

“A quar­ter would more than do it, and leave a few cents over for a treat for you. Don’t you like limes?”

“Not much; you may have my share. Here’s the money. Make it last as long as you can, for it isn’t very plenty, you know.”

“Oh, thank you! It must be so nice to have pocket-money! I’ll have a grand feast, for I haven’t tasted a lime this week. I felt del­i­cate about tak­ing any, as I couldn’t re­turn them, and I’m ac­tu­ally suf­fer­ing for one.”

Next day Amy was rather late at school; but could not re­sist the temp­ta­tion of dis­play­ing, with par­don­able pride, a moist brown-pa­per par­cel, be­fore she con­signed it to the in­most re­cesses of her desk. Dur­ing the next few min­utes the ru­mor that Amy March had got twenty-four de­li­cious limes (she ate one on the way), and was go­ing to treat, cir­cu­lated through her “set,” and the at­ten­tions of her friends be­came quite over­whelm­ing. Katy Brown in­vited her to her next party on the spot; Mary Kings­ley in­sisted on lend­ing her her watch till re­cess; and Jenny Snow, a satir­i­cal young lady, who had basely twit­ted Amy upon her lime­less state, promptly buried the hatchet, and of­fered to fur­nish an­swers to cer­tain ap­palling sums. But Amy had not for­got­ten Miss Snow’s cut­ting re­marks about “some per­sons whose noses were not too flat to smell other peo­ple’s limes, and stuck-up peo­ple, who were not too proud to ask for them;” and she in­stantly crushed “that Snow girl’s” hopes by the with­er­ing tele­gram, “You needn’t be so po­lite all of a sud­den, for you won’t get any.”

A dis­tin­guished per­son­age hap­pened to visit the school that morn­ing, and Amy’s beau­ti­fully drawn maps re­ceived praise, which honor to her foe ran­kled in the soul of Miss Snow, and caused Miss March to as­sume the airs of a stu­dious young pea­cock. But, alas, alas! pride goes be­fore a fall, and the re­venge­ful Snow turned the ta­bles with dis­as­trous suc­cess. No sooner had the guest paid the usual stale com­pli­ments, and bowed him­self out, than Jenny, un­der pre­tence of ask­ing an im­por­tant ques­tion, in­formed Mr. Davis, the teacher, that Amy March had pick­led limes in her desk.

Now Mr. Davis had de­clared limes a con­tra­band ar­ti­cle, and solemnly vowed to pub­licly fer­rule the first per­son who was found break­ing the law. This much-en­dur­ing man had suc­ceeded in ban­ish­ing chew­ing-gum af­ter a long and stormy war, had made a bon­fire of the con­fis­cated nov­els and news­pa­pers, had sup­pressed a pri­vate post-of­fice, had for­bid­den dis­tor­tions of the face, nick­names, and car­i­ca­tures, and done all that one man could do to keep half a hun­dred re­bel­lious girls in or­der. Boys are try­ing enough to hu­man pa­tience, good­ness knows! but girls are in­fin­itely more so, es­pe­cially to ner­vous gen­tle­men, with tyran­ni­cal tem­pers, and no more tal­ent for teach­ing than Dr. Blim­ber. Mr. Davis knew any quan­tity of Greek, Latin, Al­ge­bra, and olo­gies of all sorts, so he was called a fine teacher; and man­ners, morals, feel­ings, and ex­am­ples were not con­sid­ered of any par­tic­u­lar im­por­tance. It was a most un­for­tu­nate mo­ment for de­nounc­ing Amy, and Jenny knew it. Mr. Davis had ev­i­dently taken his cof­fee too strong that morn­ing; there was an east wind, which al­ways af­fected his neu­ral­gia; and his pupils had not done him the credit which he felt he de­served: there­fore, to use the ex­pres­sive, if not el­e­gant, lan­guage of a school­girl, “he was as ner­vous as a witch and as cross as a bear.” The word “limes” was like fire to pow­der; his yel­low face flushed, and he rapped on his desk with an en­ergy which made Jenny skip to her seat with un­usual ra­pid­ity.

“Young ladies, at­ten­tion, if you please!”

At the stern or­der the buzz ceased, and fifty pairs of blue, black, gray, and brown eyes were obe­di­ently fixed upon his aw­ful coun­te­nance.

“Miss March, come to the desk.”

Amy rose to com­ply with out­ward com­po­sure, but a se­cret fear op­pressed her, for the limes weighed upon her con­science.

“Bring with you the limes you have in your desk,” was the un­ex­pected com­mand which ar­rested her be­fore she got out of her seat.

“Don’t take all,” whis­pered her neigh­bor, a young lady of great pres­ence of mind.

Amy hastily shook out half a dozen, and laid the rest down be­fore Mr. Davis, feel­ing that any man pos­sess­ing a hu­man heart would re­lent when that de­li­cious per­fume met his nose. Un­for­tu­nately, Mr. Davis par­tic­u­larly de­tested the odor of the fash­ion­able pickle, and dis­gust added to his wrath.

“Is that all?”

“Not quite,” stam­mered Amy.

“Bring the rest im­me­di­ately.”

With a de­spair­ing glance at her set, she obeyed.

“You are sure there are no more?”

“I never lie, sir.”

“So I see. Now take these dis­gust­ing things two by two, and throw them out of the win­dow.”

There was a si­mul­ta­ne­ous sigh, which cre­ated quite a lit­tle gust, as the last hope fled, and the treat was rav­ished from their long­ing lips. Scar­let with shame and anger, Amy went to and fro six dread­ful times; and as each doomed cou­ple—look­ing oh! so plump and juicy—fell from her re­luc­tant hands, a shout from the street com­pleted the an­guish of the girls, for it told them that their feast was be­ing ex­ulted over by the lit­tle Ir­ish chil­dren, who were their sworn foes. This—this was too much; all flashed in­dig­nant or ap­peal­ing glances at the in­ex­orable Davis, and one pas­sion­ate lime-lover burst into tears.

As Amy re­turned from her last trip, Mr. Davis gave a por­ten­tous “Hem!” and said, in his most im­pres­sive man­ner—

“Young ladies, you re­mem­ber what I said to you a week ago. I am sorry this has hap­pened, but I never al­low my rules to be in­fringed, and I never break my word. Miss March, hold out your hand.”

Amy started, and put both hands be­hind her, turn­ing on him an im­plor­ing look which pleaded for her bet­ter than the words she could not ut­ter. She was rather a fa­vorite with “old Davis,” as, of course, he was called, and it’s my pri­vate be­lief that he would have bro­ken his word if the in­dig­na­tion of one ir­re­press­ible young lady had not found vent in a hiss. That hiss, faint as it was, ir­ri­tated the iras­ci­ble gen­tle­man, and sealed the cul­prit’s fate.

“Your hand, Miss March!” was the only an­swer her mute ap­peal re­ceived; and, too proud to cry or be­seech, Amy set her teeth, threw back her head de­fi­antly, and bore with­out flinch­ing sev­eral tin­gling blows on her lit­tle palm. They were nei­ther many nor heavy, but that made no dif­fer­ence to her. For the first time in her life she had been struck; and the dis­grace, in her eyes, was as deep as if he had knocked her down.

“You will now stand on the plat­form till re­cess,” said Mr. Davis, re­solved to do the thing thor­oughly, since he had be­gun.

That was dread­ful. It would have been bad enough to go to her seat, and see the pity­ing faces of her friends, or the sat­is­fied ones of her few en­e­mies; but to face the whole school, with that shame fresh upon her, seemed im­pos­si­ble, and for a sec­ond she felt as if she could only drop down where she stood, and break her heart with cry­ing. A bit­ter sense of wrong, and the thought of Jenny Snow, helped her to bear it; and, tak­ing the ig­no­min­ious place, she fixed her eyes on the stove-fun­nel above what now seemed a sea of faces, and stood there, so mo­tion­less and white that the girls found it very hard to study, with that pa­thetic fig­ure be­fore them.

Dur­ing the fif­teen min­utes that fol­lowed, the proud and sen­si­tive lit­tle girl suf­fered a shame and pain which she never for­got. To oth­ers it might seem a lu­di­crous or triv­ial af­fair, but to her it was a hard ex­pe­ri­ence; for dur­ing the twelve years of her life she had been gov­erned by love alone, and a blow of that sort had never touched her be­fore. The smart of her hand and the ache of her heart were for­got­ten in the sting of the thought—

“I shall have to tell at home, and they will be so dis­ap­pointed in me!”

The fif­teen min­utes seemed an hour; but they came to an end at last, and the word “Re­cess!” had never seemed so wel­come to her be­fore.

“You can go, Miss March,” said Mr. Davis, look­ing, as he felt, un­com­fort­able.

He did not soon for­get the re­proach­ful glance Amy gave him, as she went, with­out a word to any­one, straight into the an­te­room, snatched her things, and left the place “for­ever,” as she pas­sion­ately de­clared to her­self. She was in a sad state when she got home; and when the older girls ar­rived, some time later, an in­dig­na­tion meet­ing was held at once. Mrs. March did not say much, but looked dis­turbed, and com­forted her af­flicted lit­tle daugh­ter in her ten­der­est man­ner. Meg bathed the in­sulted hand with glyc­er­ine and tears; Beth felt that even her beloved kit­tens would fail as a balm for griefs like this; Jo wrath­fully pro­posed that Mr. Davis be ar­rested with­out de­lay; and Han­nah shook her fist at the “vil­lain,” and pounded pota­toes for din­ner as if she had him un­der her pes­tle.

No no­tice was taken of Amy’s flight, ex­cept by her mates; but the sharp-eyed demoi­selles dis­cov­ered that Mr. Davis was quite be­nig­nant in the af­ter­noon, also un­usu­ally ner­vous. Just be­fore school closed, Jo ap­peared, wear­ing a grim ex­pres­sion, as she stalked up to the desk, and de­liv­ered a let­ter from her mother; then col­lected Amy’s prop­erty, and de­parted, care­fully scrap­ing the mud from her boots on the door­mat, as if she shook the dust of the place off her feet.

“Yes, you can have a va­ca­tion from school, but I want you to study a lit­tle ev­ery day, with Beth,” said Mrs. March, that evening. “I don’t ap­prove of cor­po­ral pun­ish­ment, es­pe­cially for girls. I dis­like Mr. Davis’s man­ner of teach­ing, and don’t think the girls you as­so­ciate with are do­ing you any good, so I shall ask your fa­ther’s ad­vice be­fore I send you any­where else.”

“That’s good! I wish all the girls would leave, and spoil his old school. It’s per­fectly mad­den­ing to think of those lovely limes,” sighed Amy, with the air of a mar­tyr.

“I am not sorry you lost them, for you broke the rules, and de­served some pun­ish­ment for dis­obe­di­ence,” was the se­vere re­ply, which rather dis­ap­pointed the young lady, who ex­pected noth­ing but sym­pa­thy.

“Do you mean you are glad I was dis­graced be­fore the whole school?” cried Amy.

“I should not have cho­sen that way of mend­ing a fault,” replied her mother; “but I’m not sure that it won’t do you more good than a milder method. You are get­ting to be rather con­ceited, my dear, and it is quite time you set about cor­rect­ing it. You have a good many lit­tle gifts and virtues, but there is no need of parad­ing them, for con­ceit spoils the finest ge­nius. There is not much dan­ger that real tal­ent or good­ness will be over­looked long; even if it is, the con­scious­ness of pos­sess­ing and us­ing it well should sat­isfy one, and the great charm of all power is mod­esty.”

“So it is!” cried Lau­rie, who was play­ing chess in a cor­ner with Jo. “I knew a girl, once, who had a re­ally re­mark­able tal­ent for mu­sic, and she didn’t know it; never guessed what sweet lit­tle things she com­posed when she was alone, and wouldn’t have be­lieved it if any­one had told her.”

“I wish I’d known that nice girl; maybe she would have helped me, I’m so stupid,” said Beth, who stood be­side him, lis­ten­ing ea­gerly.

“You do know her, and she helps you bet­ter than any­one else could,” an­swered Lau­rie, look­ing at her with such mis­chievous mean­ing in his merry black eyes, that Beth sud­denly turned very red, and hid her face in the sofa-cush­ion, quite over­come by such an un­ex­pected dis­cov­ery.

Jo let Lau­rie win the game, to pay for that praise of her Beth, who could not be pre­vailed upon to play for them af­ter her com­pli­ment. So Lau­rie did his best, and sung de­light­fully, be­ing in a par­tic­u­larly lively hu­mor, for to the Marches he sel­dom showed the moody side of his char­ac­ter. When he was gone, Amy, who had been pen­sive all the evening, said sud­denly, as if busy over some new idea—

“Is Lau­rie an ac­com­plished boy?”

“Yes; he has had an ex­cel­lent ed­u­ca­tion, and has much tal­ent; he will make a fine man, if not spoilt by pet­ting,” replied her mother.

“And he isn’t con­ceited, is he?” asked Amy.

“Not in the least; that is why he is so charm­ing, and we all like him so much.”

“I see; it’s nice to have ac­com­plish­ments, and be el­e­gant; but not to show off, or get perked up,” said Amy thought­fully.

“Th­ese things are al­ways seen and felt in a per­son’s man­ner and con­ver­sa­tion, if mod­estly used; but it is not nec­es­sary to dis­play them,” said Mrs. March.

“Any more than it’s proper to wear all your bon­nets and gowns and rib­bons at once, that folks may know you’ve got them,” added Jo; and the lec­ture ended in a laugh.