not her health that troubles me now, it’s her spirits.”
“What makes you think so, Mother?”
“She sits alone a good deal, and doesn’t talk to her father. I found her crying over the babies the other day. This isn’t like Beth, and it worries me.”
“Have you asked her about it?”
“I have tried once or twice, but she evaded my questions.”
“I think she is growing up, and so begins to dream dreams, and have hopes. Why, Mother, Beth is eighteen, but we don’t realize it, and treat her like a child. We forget she’s a woman.”
“So she is. Dear heart, how fast you grow up,” returned her mother with a sigh and a smile.
“Can’t be helped, Mama.”
“I leave Beth to your hands, then, for she will open her tender little heart to her Jo sooner than to anyone else. Be very kind, and don’t let her think anyone watches or talks about her.”
“I’ll settle Bethy’s troubles, and then I’ll tell you mine. They are not very wearing, so they’ll keep.”
And Jo stitched away, with a wise nod which set her mother’s heart at rest about her for the present at least.
Jo watched Beth. Sitting at the window, Beth leaned her head upon her hand, while her eyes rested on the dull, autumn landscape. Suddenly someone passed below, and a voice called out, “All right! I’ll come in tonight.”
Beth started, leaned forward, smiled and nodded, then said softly as if to herself,
“How strong and well and happy that dear boy looks.”
“Hum!” said Jo, still intent upon her sister’s face, for the bright color faded as quickly as it came, the smile vanished, and presently a tear lay shining on the window ledge. Beth whisked it off, and walked out of the room.
“Mercy on me, Beth loves Laurie!” she said, sitting down in her own room, pale with the shock of the discovery.
Jo turned scarlet with a sudden thought.
“If he doesn’t love her, how dreadful it will be! He must. I’ll make him! Oh dear, we are growing up. Here’s Meg married, Amy is flourishing away at Paris, and Beth is in love. I’m the only one that has sense here.”
Though Laurie flirted with Amy and joked with Jo, his manner to Beth had always been peculiarly kind and gentle. Indeed, a general impression was that he liked Jo, who, however, did not want to hear a word upon the subject.
When Laurie first went to college, he fell in love about once a month, but these small flames were brief. But later he avoided the tender subject altogether. Things were in this state when the grand discovery was made. Jo watched Laurie that night as she never did before.
As usual Beth lay on the sofa and Laurie sat in a low chair close by, amusing her with all sorts of gossip. But that evening Jo fancied that Beth’s eyes rested on the lively, dark face beside her with peculiar pleasure, and that she listened with intense interest to an account of some exciting cricket match.
“Who knows? Stranger things have happened,” thought Jo. “She will make quite an angel of him, and he will make life delightfully easy and pleasant for the dear, if they only love each other. I don’t see how he can help it.”
As everyone was out of the way but herself, Jo began to feel that she ought to go away. But where to go? And she sat down on the sofa.
Soon a form appeared beside her, and with both arms spread over the sofa back, both long legs stretched out before him, Laurie exclaimed, with a sigh of satisfaction…
“Now, good and cheap.”
“No slang,” snapped Jo.
“Come, Jo, don’t be thorny.”
“How many bouquets have you sent Miss Randal this week?”
“Not one, upon my word. She’s engaged.”
“I’m glad of it, that’s one of your foolish extravagances, sending flowers and things to girls for whom you don’t care two pins[25],” continued Jo.
“Sensible girls for whom I care whole papers of pins won’t let me send them ‘flowers and things’, so what can I do? My feelings need an exit.”
“Mother doesn’t approve of flirting even in fun, and you flirt desperately, Teddy.”
“I’ll give anything if I can answer, ‘So do you’. As I can’t, I’ll merely say that I don’t see any harm in that pleasant little game, if all parties understand that it’s only play.”
“Well, it looks pleasant, but I can’t learn how it’s done.”,
“Take lessons of Amy, she has a regular talent for it.”
“Yes, she does it very prettily, and never seems to go too far.”
“I’m glad you can’t flirt. It’s really refreshing to see a sensible, straightforward girl, who can be jolly and kind without making a fool of herself. Between ourselves, Jo, some of the girls I know really do go on at such a rate I’m ashamed of them. They don’t mean any harm, I’m sure, but if they knew how we fellows talked about them afterward, they’d mend their ways, I fancy.”
“They do the same, and as their tongues are the sharpest, you fellows get the worst of it, for you are as silly as they, every bit. If you behaved properly, they would, but knowing you like their nonsense, they keep it up, and then you blame them. If you must have an ‘exit’, Teddy, go and devote yourself to one of the ‘pretty, modest girls’ whom you do respect, and not waste your time with the silly ones.”
“You really advise it?” and Laurie looked at her with an odd mixture of anxiety and merriment in his face.
“Yes, I do.”
Jo lay long awake that night, and was just dropping off when the sound of a stifled sob made her fly to Beth’s bedside, with the anxious inquiry,
“What is it, dear?”
“I thought you were asleep,” sobbed Beth.
“Is it the old pain, my precious?”
“No, it’s a new one, but I can bear it,” and Beth tried to check her tears.
“Tell me all about it, and let me cure it as I often did the other.”
“You can’t, there is no cure.”
There Beth’s voice gave way, and clinging to her sister, she cried so despairingly that Jo was frightened.
“Where is it? Shall I call Mother?”
“No, no, don’t call her, don’t tell her. I shall be better soon. Lie down here. I’ll be quiet and go to sleep, indeed I will.”
“Does anything trouble you, dear?”
“Yes, Jo,” after a long pause.
“Wouldn’t it comfort you to tell me what it is?”
“Not now, not yet.”
“Then I won’t ask, but remember, Bethy, that Mother and Jo are always glad to hear and help you, if they can.”
“I know it. I’ll tell you by-and-by.”
“Is the pain better now?”
“Oh, yes, much better, you are so comfortable, Jo.”
“Go to sleep, dear. I’ll stay with you.”
So cheek to cheek they fell asleep.
But Jo had made up her mind, and after pondering over a project for some days, she confided it to her mother.
“You asked me the other day what my wishes were. I’ll tell you one of them, Mummy,” she began, as they sat along together. “I want to go away somewhere this winter for a change.”
“Why,