Laurie led her to the library to wait for his grandfather. It was lined with books, and there were pictures and statues, and distracting little cabinets full of coins and curiosities, and Sleepy Hollow chairs, and queer tables, and bronzes, and best of all, a great open fireplace with quaint tiles all round it.
“What richness!” sighed Jo, sinking into the depth of a velour chair and gazing about her with an air of intense satisfaction. “Theodore Laurence, you ought to be the happiest boy in the world,” she added impressively.
“A fellow can’t live on books,” said Laurie, shaking his head as he perched on a table opposite.
She stood before a fine portrait of the old gentleman and said decidedly, “I’m sure now that I shouldn’t be afraid of him, for he’s got kind eyes, though his mouth is grim, and he looks as if he had a tremendous will of his own.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” said a gruff voice behind her, and there, to her great dismay, stood old Mr Laurence with a wooden stake raised high in his hand.
For a minute a wild desire to run away possessed her, but that was cowardly, and the girls would laugh at her, so she resolved to stay and get out of the scrape as she could. She hated the thought of hurting her new friend’s elderly relative but she would gladly knock him down with a scissor kick if necessary to her survival.
The gruff voice was gruffer than ever, as the old gentleman said abruptly, after the dreadful pause, “So you’re not afraid of me, hey?”
“Not much, sir,” she said with a glance to the stake.
Mr Laurence took a threatening step forward. “What have you been doing to this boy of mine, hey?” was the next question, sharply put.
“Only trying to be neighbourly, sir.” And Jo told how her visit came about.
“You think he needs cheering up a bit, do you?” he asked, his tone suspicious. Everyone knew vampires weren’t charitable, so he thought the girl must have an ulterior motive.
“Yes, sir, he seems a little lonely, and young folks would do him good perhaps. We are only girls, but we should be glad to help if we could,” said Jo eagerly. “I train my sisters daily in the skills of slayer hunting. Laurie could join us.”
Suspecting a trap, the old man raised his stake.
“I could, sir,” Laurie said, speaking for the first time since his grandfather appeared. “They could teach me how to defend myself against vampire slayers.”
That the human lad had nothing to fear from vampire slayers was an obvious point his grandfather couldn’t help but make. Then he added, “And who will teach you how to defend yourself against the vampires?”
Jo laughed. “Us? We’re not a threat to anyone!”
Laurie laughed too, and the change in his grandson did not escape the old gentleman. There was colour, light and life in the boy’s face now, vivacity in his manner, and genuine merriment in his laugh.
“She’s right, the lad is lonely,” thought Mr Laurence, but he wasn’t sure that allowing him into the company of four deadly creatures was the best solution. He liked Jo, for her odd, blunt ways suited him, but she was a vampire and therefore unworthy of trust.
Laurie knew how implacable his grandfather was in his prejudices and said sorely, “It’s just as well. The training would take me away from my study of piano. I plan to be a musician, just like my mother, you know.”
“Oh, how marvellous!” cried Jo, clapping her hands. “You will play grand concerts before hundreds and hundreds of people and travel all over the world and see so many—”
“That will do, that will do, young lady,” Mr Laurence said. “Too many sugarplums are not good for him. His music isn’t bad, but I hope he will do as well in more important things.”
“He doesn’t like to hear me play,” explained Laurie.
“Then you should let him train with us, sir,” Jo said. “We have only a very, very old piano that nobody can get much music out of save my sister Beth, who loves playing.”
Mr Laurence considered the argument. Self-defence was a manly pursuit, even when practised by vampire girls, and the study of it would leave Laurie less time for inconsequentials like music.
Aware that he wavered, Jo said, “Honestly, sir, we’re good folks. My mother helps the poor and my father is fighting the war because he considers it his duty.”
The latter hardly recommended the March family to the old man, who thought that the carnage of war was a sideboard buffet with endless appetising treats for a creature of the night. Nevertheless, he relented and agreed to let Laurie come amongst them for the purposes of strength training and calisthenics.
Delighted, Jo made her goodbyes and rushed home to tell her sisters about their new recruit.
12 Critics disagree as to the source of the reference. The most widely credited source is Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832). However, scholars of vampire literature point to Ye Olde Tale of Ivanhoe the Eternal by Sir Wilfred Ivanhoe (1173-1879), a first-person account of the adventure tale on which Scott based his famous story. In 1865, the vampire-author embarked on a much-celebrated reading tour of North America to mark the release of a new illustrated edition of his classic, and the Marches would have been sure to have seen him in Concord.
13 Literally “white food”; as no edible products were traditionally kept in a vampire household, Meg is presumed to have made the blancmange out of plaster and water.
BETH FINDS THE PALACE BEAUTIFUL
To appease Mr Laurence’s concerns, the girls held their training sessions in the large house under the watchful gaze of the old man, who quickly saw that the only one committed to the training itself was Jo, for her sisters laughed and chatted throughout the entire event. All were delighted with the new venue except timid Beth, who thought Laurie’s grandfather was as fierce as the lions who protected the Palace Beautiful14 in their game of Vilgrim’s Progress.
Mr Laurence, although not a lion, did growl when he was displeased, a circumstance that occurred less and less as he spent more and more time in the girls’ company. He even unwound enough to pay a call on Mrs March, whose generosity with the Hummels touched his heart.
The new friendship flourished like grass in spring. Everyone liked Laurie, and he privately informed his tutor Mr Brooke that “the Marches were regularly splendid girls”. With the delightful enthusiasm of vampire youth, they took the solitary boy into their midst and made much of him, and he found something very charming in the innocent companionship of these simple-hearted undead girls. Never having known mother or sisters, he was quick to feel the influences they brought about him, and their busy, lively ways made him ashamed of the indolent life he led. He was tired of books, and found vampires so interesting now that Mr Brooke was obliged to make very unsatisfactory reports, for Laurie was always playing truant and running over to the Marches’.
“Never mind, let him take a holiday, and make it up afterwards,” said the old man, whose stance on vampires had undergone a sweeping change. “The good lady next door says he is studying too hard and needs young society, amusement and exercise. I suspect she is right, and that I’ve been coddling the fellow as if I’d been his grandmother. Let him do what he likes, as long as he is happy. He can’t get into mischief in that little