The Little Women Chapter One

We can't do much, but we can make our little sacrifices, and ought to do it gladly.

"I don't believe any of you suffer as I do," cried Amy, "for you don't have to go to school with impertinent girls, who plague you if you don't know your lessons, and laugh at your dresses, and label your father if he isn't rich, and insult you when your nose isn't nice."

"If you mean libel, I'd say so, and not talk about labels, as if Papa was a pickle bottle," advised Jo, laughing.

"Jo does use such slang words!" observed Amy, with a reproving look at the long figure stretched on the rug.

"I detest rude, unladylike girls!"

"I hate affected, niminy–piminy chits!"

"I hate to think I've got to grow up, and be Miss March, and wear long gowns, and look as prim as a China Aster!

So you must try to be contented with making your name boyish, and playing brother to us girls," said Beth, stroking the rough head with a hand that all the dish washing and dusting in the world could not make ungentle in its touch.

I like your nice manners and refined ways of speaking, when you don't try to be elegant.

Her father called her 'Little Miss Tranquility', and the name suited her excellently, for she seemed to live in a happy world of her own, only venturing out to meet the few whom she trusted and loved.

What will we get?" exclaimed Jo.

I'm getting too old for such things," observed Meg, who was as much a child as ever about 'dressing–up' frolics.

I don't care if Hugo does come at me with a pistol," returned Amy, who was not gifted with dramatic power, but was chosen because she was small enough to be borne out shrieking by the villain of the piece.

Clasp your hands so, and stagger across the room, crying frantically, 'Roderigo!

Save me!'" and away went Jo, with a melodramatic scream which was truly thrilling.

Amy followed, but she poked her hands out stiffly before her, and jerked herself along as if she went by machinery, and her "Ow!" was more suggestive of pins being run into her than of fear and anguish.

Then things went smoothly, for Don Pedro defied the world in a speech of two pages without a single break.

Roderigo rent his chains asunder manfully, and Hugo died in agonies of remorse and arsenic, with a wild, "Ha!

Don't stop to quirk your little finger and simper over your plate, Amy," cried Jo, choking on her tea and dropping her bread, butter side down, on the carpet in her haste to get at the treat.

"I think it was so splendid in Father to go as chaplain when he was too old to be drafted, and not strong enough for a soldier," said Meg warmly.

Nothing delighted you more than to have me tie my piece bags on your backs for burdens, give you hats and sticks and rolls of paper, and let you travel through the house from the cellar, which was the City of Destruction, up, up, to the housetop, where you had all the lovely things you could collect to make a Celestial City."

If I wasn't too old for such things, I'd rather like to play it over again," said Amy, who began to talk of renouncing childish things at the mature age of twelve.

"We were in the Slough of Despond tonight, and Mother came and pulled us out as Help did in the book.

"We were in the Slough of Despond tonight, and Mother came and pulled us out as Help did in the book.

Amy chirped like a cricket, and Jo wandered through the airs at her own sweet will, always coming out at the wrong place with a croak or a quaver that spoiled the most pensive tune.