With love,

Jo.

9

Concord, June 1870.

Dearest Amy,

Such goings-on! Aunt March has visited the Dovecote! Demi is to visit Plumfield! John is convulsed with laughter, and Meg don’t know where to put her face! But I’m telling the tale all topsy-turvy, so will settle down and “begin at the beginning,” as the King advised the White Rabbit in that nonsensical English book you sent us about the little girl who fell down the rabbit hole.

You know that Aunt March had not visited the Dovecote since Meg and John moved in there. Having told Meg on her wedding day itself that she “thought she’d be sorry” for marrying John, she could hardly come a-calling like a plain friendly neighbor; and though they had all three been civil enough when they happened to meet at our home, still, there was a coldness between them that did not decrease, and—since John is every particle as stubborn in his way as Aunt March is in hers—if something hadn’t happened to break it, it looked set to stay. I don’t know for sure what did happen, but had suspected that Father might have had a quiet word with Aunt; although, upon reflection, am now moved to wonder whether perhaps the old lady had received a wheedling letter from a certain favored niece who is spending her summer in Trouville? Whatever the cause, the post arrived at the Dovecote one morning last week bearing a note announcing the intention of Mrs. Henry Joseph March to pay a call in three days’ time.

You have never witnessed such a commotion as that little house saw while it was being prepared for Aunt’s visit. Meg flew around like one distracted, sweeping corners, wiping windows, moving this vase of flowers here to that table there and changing this picture on this wall with that looking glass on the other, then trying a different effect with an alternate composition, then deciding upon another, until at last she had arrived upon the perfect arrangement for her little nest, which was the very same one she had always had from the beginning, with the only difference being that its owner was now half perished from exhaustion. John looked upon all of this with quiet amusement—he’s too good a man to have ever said an unkind word about the dreadful things Aunt March said of him, but there was a pucker about his mouth as he watched her activities, and all of her invitations to him to join her were met with a calm, “Thank you, my dear, but I’m just as content to sit with my book and improve my mind, which always needs it, rather than the house, which doesn’t.”

At last, the Dovecote was deemed fit for its visitor, and the next matter to be turned to was the conduct of its younger inhabitants. Daisy, thought Meg, posed no cause for alarm, for, as you know, she “loves evvybody,” and can generally be relied upon to be an ornament to the finest of society. Demi, however, was another matter. He has lately acquired the habit of repeating everything he has heard to everybody he meets, and sometimes to devastating effect. It was not his mother, nor his father, but no less an authority than Dranpa himself who took him aside for a discussion. He was not, he was instructed firmly, to inquire of his august Aunt the meaning of the words “crotchety” or “crosspatch”; he was not to ask what it meant to “hoard like a magpie” or “have a face so sour it could curdle the milk” (this last reprehensible expression, I confess, having fallen into his receptive little mind from the unwary lips of his Aunt Dodo); he was to be quiet, and respectful, and bear in mind that she was not only his Aunt March, but his Great-Great-Aunt March, and as such must be accorded all deference. He listened carefully to this oration, several times nodded his curly little head, and at last declared himself schooled in appropriate behavior. Meg was less than convinced, but as she herself said, “Father had spoken—and what more could any of us do?”