“Mercy me! I don’t know anything about love and such nonsense!” cried Jo, with a funny mixture of interest and contempt. “In novels, the girls show it by starting and blushing, fainting away, growing thin, and acting like fools. Now Meg does not do anything of the sort: she eats and drinks and sleeps, like a sensible creature: she looks straight in my face when I talk about that man, and only blushes a little bit when Teddy jokes about lovers. I forbid him to do it, but he doesn’t mind me as he ought.”

“Then you fancy that Meg is not interested in John?”

“Who?” cried Jo, staring.

“ Mr. Brooke. I call him ‘John’ now; we fell into the way of doing so at the hospital, and he likes it.”