“Don’t lecture any more, there’s a good soul! I have enough all through the week, and like to enjoy myself when I come home. I’ll get myself up regardless of expense, tomorrow, and be a satisfaction to my friends.”
“I’ll leave you in peace if you’ll only let your hair grow. I’m not aristocratic, but I do object to being seen with a person who looks like a young prizefighter,” observed Jo severely.
“This unassuming style promotes study; that’s why we adopt it,” returned Laurie, who certainly could not be accused of vanity, having voluntarily sacrificed a handsome curly crop to the demand for quarter-of-an-inch-long stubble.
“By the way, Jo, I think that little Parker is really getting desperate about Amy. He talks of her constantly, writes poetry, and moons about in a most suspicious manner. He’d better nip his little passion in the bud, hadn’t he?” added Laurie, in a confidential, elder-brotherly tone, after a minute’s silence.
“Of course he had; we don’t want any more marrying in this family for years to come. Mercy on us, what are the children thinking of?” and Jo looked as much scandalized as if Amy and little Parker were not yet in their teens.
“It’s a fast age, and I don’t know what we are coming to, ma’am. You are a mere infant, but you’ll go next, Jo, and we’ll be left lamenting,” said Laurie, shaking his head over the degeneracy of the times.
“Don’t be alarmed; I’m not one of the agreeable sort. Nobody will want me, and it’s a mercy, for there should always be one old maid in a family.”
“You won’t give anyone a chance,” said Laurie, with a sidelong glance, and a little more color than before in his sunburnt face. “You won’t show the soft side of your character; and if a fellow gets a peep at it by accident,