“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 and looked at his pumps, till Jo said, trying to be polite and easy, “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 outright, for Jo’s prim manner was rather funny when he remembered how they had chatted about cricket when he brought the cat home.
That put Jo at her ease and she laughed too, as she said, in her heartiest way, “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, trying to look sober while his black eyes shone with fun.
“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 every one 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, tread on people’s toes, or do something dreadful, so I keep out of mischief and let Meg sail about. 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! I love dearly to hear people describe their travels.”
Laurie didn’t seem to know where to begin, but Jo’s eager questions soon set him going, and he 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.”
Jo quite glowed with pleasure at this boyish praise of her sister, and stored it up to repeat to Meg. Both peeped and critisized and chatted till they felt like old acquaintances. Laurie’s bashfulness soon wore off, for Jo’s gentlemanly demeanor amused and set him at his ease, and Jo was her merry self again, because her dress was forgotten and nobody lifted their eyebrows at her. She liked the ‘Laurence boy’ better than ever and took several good looks at him, so that she might describe him to the girls, for they had no brothers, very few male cousins, and boys were almost unknown creatures to them.
“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 in time and, with unusual tact, tried to find out in a roundabout way.
“I suppose you are going to college soon? I see you pegging away at your books-no, I mean studying hard.” And Jo blushed at the dreadful ‘pegging’ which had escaped her.
Laurie smiled but didn’t seem shocked, and answered with a shrug. “Not for a year or two. 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! Nothing but grinding or skylarking. 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 his black brows looked rather threatening as he knit them, so she changed the subject by saying, as her foot kept time, “That’s a splendid polka! Why don’t you go and try it?”
“If you will come too,” he answered, with a gallant little bow.
“I can’t, for I told Meg I wouldn’t, because-” There Jo stopped, and looked undecided whether to tell or to laugh.
“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,