Луиза Мэй Олкотт – Хорошие жёны / Good wives. Уровень 3 (страница 3)

“It’s a pity Laurie isn’t here to help us,” began Jo, as they sat down to ice cream and salad for the second time in two days.

A warning look from her mother checked any further remarks. The whole family ate in heroic silence.

“Bundle everything into a basket and send it to the Hummels. I’m sick of the sight of this, and there’s no reason you must all die of a surfeit because I’ve been a fool,” cried Amy, wiping her eyes.

“I’m very sorry you were disappointed, dear, but we all did our best to satisfy you,” said Mrs. March, in a tone full of motherly regret.

“I am satisfied. I’ve done what I undertook, and it’s not my fault that it failed. I comfort myself with that,” said Amy with a little quiver in her voice. “I thank you all very much for helping me. I’ll thank you still more if you won’t talk about it for a month, at least.”

Literary Lessons

Fortune suddenly smiled upon Jo, and dropped a good luck penny in her path. Not a golden penny, exactly, but anyway.

Every few weeks she shut herself up in her room, put on herscribbling suit[14], and ‘fall into a vortex’. Her ‘scribbling suit’ consisted of a black woolen pinafore on which she wiped her pen, and a cap of the same material, adorned with a cheerful red bow, into which she bundled her hair.

She did not think herself a genius by any means, but liked to write. She sat safe and happy in an imaginary world, full of friends almost as real and dear to her as any in the flesh. The divine usually lasted a week or two, and then she emerged from her ‘vortex’, hungry, sleepy, cross, or despondent.

One day she escorted Miss Crocker to a lecture, and in return for her virtue was rewarded with a new idea. It was a lecture on the Pyramids. They arrived early, and Jo amused herself by examining the faces of the people. On her left were two matrons, with massive foreheads and bonnets, discussing Women’s Rights. Beyond sat a pair of humble lovers, artlessly holding each other by the hand. A somber spinster was eating peppermints out of a paper bag. An old gentleman was taking his nap behind a yellow bandanna. On her right, her only neighbor was a young man with a newspaper.

Pausing to turn a page, the lad saw her, and with boyish good nature offered half his paper, saying bluntly, “Do you want to read it? That’s a first-rate story.”

Jo accepted it with a smile. She liked the lads. Soon she found herself involved in the usual labyrinth of love, mystery, and murder, for the story belonged to that class of light literature.

“Good, isn’t it?” asked the boy, as her eye went down the last paragraph of her portion.

“I think you and I can write better if we try,” returned Jo.

“I will be happy if I can. She makes good money of such stories, they say.”

And he pointed to the name of Mrs. S.L.A.N.G. Northbury, under the title of the tale.

“Do you know her?” asked Jo, with sudden interest.

“No, but I read all her stories, and I know a fellow who works in the office where this paper is printed.”

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