Chapter three
The Laurence boy

“Jo! Jo! Where are you?” cried Meg at the foot of the 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 a sofa.

“A 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.”

“I'm sure our pops look like silk. Yours is as good as new.”

“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 spoiled 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.”

“You can't ask Mother for new ones, they are so expensive. Can't you make them do?”

“I can hold them crumpled up in my hand, so no one will know how stained they are. I'll go without. I don't care what people say!” cried Jo, taking up her book. “Now go and answer your note, and let me finish this story.”

So Meg went away to look over her dress.

On New Year's Eve the two younger girls played dressing maids and the two elder were absorbed in the all-important business of ‘getting ready for the party'. After various lesser mishaps, they were finished. They looked very well in their simple suits, Meg's 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^[5], 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. “Don't eat much supper, and come away at eleven when I send Hannah for you.”

“If you see me doing anything wrong, just remind me by a wink, will you?” asked Jo, once they were out of the gates.

“No, winking isn't ladylike. I'll lift my eyebrows if anything is wrong, and nod if you are all right.”

Down they went, feeling a trifle timid, for they seldom went to parties.

Mrs. Gardiner greeted them kindly and handed them over to the eldest of her six daughters. Then the dancing began. Jo saw a big red headed youth approaching her corner, and fearing he meant to engage her, she slipped into a curtained recess. Unfortunately, another person had chosen the same refuge, and 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.”

“Shan'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. Trying to be polite and easy, Jo said, “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.

That put Jo at her ease and she laughed too, as she said, “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.

“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. 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!”

Laurie 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 on 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?”

“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.”

“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^[6] in time and, with unusual tact, tried to find out in a round-about way.

“I suppose you are going to college soon?”

Laurie smiled. “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! 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 changed the subject by saying, “That's a splendid polka! Why don't you go and try it?”

“If you will come too,” he answered.

“I can't, for I told Meg I wouldn't, because…”

“Because, what?”

“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. The hall was empty, and they had a grand polka, for Laurie danced well. When the music stopped, they sat down on the stairs to get their breath. That's 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. I can hardly stand, and