“Can I help you?” said a friendly voice. And there was Laurie, with a full cup in one hand and a plate of ice in the other.
“It’s nothing,” Meg assured. “I turned my foot a little, that’s all.”
But Laurie could see for himself that she’d turned her foot a lot and immediately offered to take her home in his grandfather’s carriage.
“It’s so early! You can’t mean to go yet?” began Jo, looking relieved but hesitating to accept the offer.
“I always go early, I do, truly! Please let me take you home. It’s all on my way, you know, and it rains, they say.”
That settled it. Jo gratefully accepted and they rolled away in the luxurious closed carriage, feeling very festive and elegant.
“I had a capital time. Did you?” asked Jo, rumpling up her hair, and making herself comfortable.
Meg agreed that she did up until the moment she twisted her ankle and had to leave. Laurie went on the box so Meg could keep her foot up, and the girls talked over their party in freedom.
“Sallie’s friend, Annie Moffat, took a fancy to me, and asked me to come and spend a week with her when Sallie does. She is going in the spring when the opera comes, and it will be perfectly splendid, if Mother only lets me go,” Meg said, cheering up at the thought.
Jo told her adventures, and by the time she had finished they were at home. With many thanks, they said goodnight and entered the house. The instant the door creaked, two little heads bobbed up and eager voices cried out…
“Tell about the party! Tell about the party!”
“I declare, it really seems like being a fine young lady, to come home from the party in a carriage and sit in my dressing gown with a maid to wait on me,” said Meg.
“I don’t believe fine young ladies enjoy themselves a bit more than we do, in spite of our burned gowns, one glove apiece, and tight slippers that sprain our ankles when we are silly enough to wear them.” And I think Jo was quite right.
6 International bestseller by Dimitri Strinsky (b. 1294), translated into thirty-seven languages, including Swahili. Its sequel, Seven More Signs of a Vampire Slayer and How I Missed Them the First Time, is also a classic.
7 The Pinkerton National Detective Agency, established in 1850 by Allan Pinkerton, who became famous after foiling an attempt to assassinate President-elect Abraham Lincoln. Pinkerton was the first personal-security agency to hire vampires to screen for slayers.
8 For an example, see “Vampires Are Thoughtless Killing Machines,” New York Times, January 23, 1856.
9 Type of shoe said to be worn by men in olden times; however, this detail has been pointed to by several radical feminist scholars as proof that Laurie’s desire to be a vampire is really a repressed desire to be a woman. See Karen Thomapolis’s Unmasking Gender in Little Vampire Women.
With the holidays over, the girls had to take up their packs, which, after the week of merrymaking, seemed heavier than ever. Beth lay on the sofa, trying to comfort herself with a cat and three juicy kittens she’d found hiding in the basement. Amy was fretting because her lessons were not learned and she couldn’t find her rubbers. Meg, whose burden consisted of four spoiled vampire children, had not heart enough even to make herself pretty as usual by putting on a blue neck ribbon and dressing her hair in the most becoming way.
“Where’s the use of looking nice, when no one sees me but those cross midgets, and no one cares whether I’m pretty or not?” she muttered, shutting her drawer with a jerk as she thought of Mrs King and her family. “I shall have to toil and moil all my days, with only little bits of fun now and then because I’m poor and can’t enjoy my life as other girls do. It’s a shame!”
“Well, that’s just the way it is, so don’t let us grumble but shoulder our bundles and trudge along as cheerfully as Marmee does. I’m sure Aunt March is a regular Old Man of the Sea10 to me, but I suppose when I’ve learned to carry her without complaining, she will tumble off, or get so light that I shan’t mind her,” said Jo, whose resolute speech didn’t match her dejected attitude. She had been so despondent that she didn’t try to marshal the girls into their usual sunset training session of karate, calisthenics and boxing, with which they complied with varying degrees of enthusiasm.
Jo happened to suit Aunt March, who was lame and needed an active person to protect her. The childless old lady had offered to adopt one of the girls when the troubles came, and was much offended because her offer was declined. Other friends told the Marches that they had lost all chance of being remembered in the rich old vampire’s will, but the unworldly Marches only said…
“We can’t give up our girls for a dozen fortunes. Rich or poor, we will keep together and be happy in one another.”
As well, they knew Aunt March was a tough old bird who had been around for more than four hundred years and would likely be around for another four hundred. Their chances for inheritance were already decidedly slim.
The Marches, in their fondness for family over fortune, were not that unusual amongst their contemporaries. Vampire affection, though not as heartwarmingly sentimental as human affection, was deep and sincere. Parents sired their children and kept them close until they reached their majority at fifty chronological years, at which point they could sire a lifemate and settle down. Freshly sired children usually followed.
Mr and Mrs March had themselves followed that path, with Mr March siring Mrs March and then a century later siring the four sisters, whom he found in an orphanage about to be separated by an unfeeling proprietress. Marmee’s kind heart went out to the benighted foursome and she knew upon seeing them that they were meant to be hers. Her husband complied with her request, feeling too that these unfortunate children needed a strong hand and a stronger soul to lead them, and twenty-four hours later, the giddy new mother stood over the four little graves from which her newborn daughters would emerge. It was the happiest day of her life.
Since then, the Marches had come down in the world, for Mr March had lost his property in trying to help an unfortunate friend. The friend turned out to be a slayer who stole Mr March’s money through an elaborate counterfeit stock scheme.
That Mr March allowed himself to be swindled out of ownership of his ancestral home disgusted Aunt March, who urged him to hunt down the cowardly slayer and consume him in a fiery fit of rage. Her nephew resisted her counsel, for he believed strongly in his humanitarian principles and was happier to let the villain live than to compromise himself.
His stubbornness made his aunt so angry she refused to speak to them for a time, but when her husband was beheaded by one of his own servants, she was forced to re-evaluate her connections and decided the only associates she could trust were family. It was beyond shocking that Uncle March, the premier vampire defender in New England, was slain in his very own home. Well schooled in stealth and an experienced practitioner of the scientifical method, he should never have fallen for the cartoonish pratfalls of the Buffoonish Butler Hoax,11 a well-known ruse in which a deadly opponent infiltrates a household by pretending to be a harmless servant