first.
“Why do you want to spend your money, worry your family, and turn the house upside down for some girls who don’t care a sixpence for you?” said Jo.
“I don’t truckle, and I hate the situation when someone patronizes as much as you do!” returned Amy. “The girls care for me, and I for them. There’s a great deal of kindness and sense and talent among them, in spite of what you call fashionable nonsense. You don’t care to make people like you – I do, and I mean to make the most of every chance that comes.”
The invitations were sent, nearly all accepted. The following Monday was set apart for the grand event. If not on Monday, the young ladies will come on Tuesday. This arrangement aggravated Jo and Hannah (the March family maid and cook, their only servant) to the last degree.
The lunch looked charming. Amy surveyed it. It will taste well. Amy will borrow glass, china, and silver, and after the event, everything will get safely home again. The carriages were promised. Meg and Mother were all ready to do the honors. Beth was able to help Hannah behind the scenes. Jo was trying to be as lively and amiable as possible. Amy cheered herself with anticipations of the happy moment when, after the lunch is safely over, she will drive away with her friends for an afternoon of artistic delights.
At eleven nobody came, and at two the exhausted family sat down in a blaze of sunshine to consume the perishable portions of the feast.
“No doubt about the weather today, they will certainly come. So we must be ready for them,”
said Amy, as the sun woke her next morning.
“I can’t get any lobsters, so you won’t have any salad today,” said Mr. March, coming in half an hour later, with an expression of placid despair.
“Use the chicken then, the toughness won’t matter in a salad,” advised his wife.
“Hannah left it on the kitchen table a minute, and the kittens got at it. I’m very sorry, Amy,” added Beth.
“Then I must have a lobster, for tongue alone won’t do,” said Amy decidedly.
“Shall I rush into town and demand one?” asked Jo.
“You’d come bringing it home under your arm without any paper, just to bother me. I’ll go myself,” answered Amy, whose temper was beginning to fail.
She departed. After some delay, the object of her desire was procured, likewise a bottle of dressing to prevent further loss of time at home, and off she drove again. Once she was back at home, she went through with the preparations, and at twelve o’clock all was ready again. Feeling that the neighbors were interested in her movements, she wished to efface the memory of yesterday’s failure by a grand success today. So she ordered the ‘cherry bounce’, and drove away in state to meet and escort her guests to the banquet.
“There’s the rumble, they’re coming! I’ll go onto the porch and meet them,” said Mrs. March. But after one glance, she retired, with an indescribable expression. In the big carriage, sat Amy and one young lady.
“Run, Beth, and help Hannah clear half the things off the table. It will be too absurd to put a luncheon for twelve before a single girl,” cried Jo.
In came Amy, quite calm and delightfully cordial to the one guest who had kept her promise. The rest of the family played their parts equally well. Miss Eliott found them a most hilarious set, for it was impossible to control entirely the merriment which possessed them. The lunch was eaten, the studio and garden visited, and art discussed with enthusiasm, Amy ordered a buggy, and drove her friend quietly about the neighborhood till sunset, when ‘the party went out’. As she came walking in, she was looking very tired but as composed as ever.
“You’ve had a lovely afternoon for your drive, dear,” said her mother respectfully.
“Miss Eliott is a very sweet girl, and seemed to enjoy herself, I thought,” observed Beth, with unusual warmth.
“Could you give me some of your cake? I really need some, I have a company, and I can’t make such delicious stuff as yours,” asked Meg.
“Take it all. I’m the only one here who likes sweet things. It will mold before I can dispose of it,” answered Amy, with a sigh.
“It’s a pity Laurie isn’t here to help us,” began Jo, as they sat down to ice cream and salad for the second time in two days.
A warning look from her mother checked any further remarks. The whole family ate in heroic silence.
“Bundle everything into a basket and send it to the Hummels. I’m sick of the sight of this, and there’s no reason you must all die of a surfeit because I’ve been a fool,” cried Amy, wiping her eyes.
“I’m very sorry you were disappointed, dear, but we all did our best to satisfy you,” said Mrs. March, in a tone full of motherly regret.
“I am satisfied. I’ve done what I undertook, and it’s not my fault that it failed. I comfort myself with that,” said Amy with a little quiver in her voice. “I thank you all very much for helping me. I’ll thank you still more if you won’t talk about it for a month, at least.”
Literary Lessons
Fortune suddenly smiled upon Jo, and dropped a good luck penny in her path. Not a golden penny, exactly, but anyway.
Every few weeks she shut herself up in her room, put on her scribbling suit[14], and ‘fall into a vortex’. Her ‘scribbling suit’ consisted of a black woolen pinafore on which she wiped her pen, and a cap of the same material, adorned with a cheerful red bow, into which she bundled her hair.
She did not think herself a genius by any means, but liked to write. She sat safe and happy in an imaginary world, full of friends almost as real and dear to her as any in the flesh. The divine usually lasted a week or two, and then she emerged from her ‘vortex’, hungry, sleepy, cross, or despondent.
One day she escorted Miss Crocker to a lecture, and in return for her virtue was rewarded with a new idea. It was a lecture on the Pyramids. They arrived early, and Jo amused herself by examining the faces of the people. On her left were two matrons, with massive foreheads and bonnets, discussing Women’s Rights. Beyond sat a pair of humble lovers, artlessly holding each other by the hand. A somber spinster was eating peppermints out of a paper bag. An old gentleman was taking his nap behind a yellow bandanna. On her right, her only neighbor was a young man with a newspaper.
Pausing to turn a page, the lad saw her, and with boyish good nature offered half his paper, saying bluntly, “Do you want to read it? That’s a first-rate story.”
Jo accepted it with a smile. She liked the lads. Soon she found herself involved in the usual labyrinth of love, mystery, and murder, for the story belonged to that class of light literature.
“Good, isn’t it?” asked the boy, as her eye went down the last paragraph of her portion.
“I think you and I can write better if we try,” returned Jo.
“I will be happy if I can. She makes good money of such stories, they say.”
And he pointed to the name of Mrs. S.L.A.N.G. Northbury, under the title of the tale.
“Do you know her?” asked Jo, with sudden interest.
“No,
scribbling suit – пиcательский костюм
