“And you wear more jewels than my sister!”

The next few moments, I fear, remain something of a muddle to me. I know that Laurie ran “haste-post-haste” to drop a quiet word to Mr. Laurence, who most suddenly and conveniently was stricken by his old affliction of the gout, that hasty adieus were made, and that within very short notice I was bundled into the carriage and taken home. Mr. Laurence, to whom the particulars of the incident remained happily unclear, clung gallantly to the pretense of his indisposition, while Laurie tried manfully to maintain a sober countenance, and for most of the journey succeeded. But just when we were turning the last corner onto the road home, Mr. Laurence, thinking to cheer me a little, most innocently asked me, “Did you not think, my dear, that Miss Tudor’s jewels were looking particularly fine tonight?” At which Laurie laid his head down upon his knees in a perfect fit of merriment, and did not raise it again until we had reached the house.

This morning, the story was all over town, and almost with the cock’s crow, along came Meg, as regal as Empress Eugénie of France, to scold me on my deplorable want of breeding and lack of good manners. It has been a dismal day, Mother. Meg has lectured, Amy has looked grieved, Hannah has whisked from parlor to kitchen with not a word, and even Miss Tabby has turned her striped tail up in disdain and refuses to talk to me. Matters were made worse when, halfway through the morning, came a ring at the door, and there stood a messenger with a box of flowers, such lovely roses and ferns and heliotrope, as fine as any from Mr. Laurence’s conservatory, with a note addressed to Miss Josephine March, that read, “To the only young lady last night who made me wish I were forty years younger. Respectfully, James Patterson (Major).”

For a moment, I thought that this might dampen at least a little of Meg’s fury, but, on the contrary, it had the effect of stoking the fire. It is not sufficient, she tells me, to be pleasant only to the people I find charming or attractive; it is the duty of any person of good breeding to be amiable to every person she meets, and most particularly when she is a young woman and a guest in another person’s house. I brought shame on the family last night, and if I cannot learn to hold my tongue now, while I am still young enough to learn new ways, I will grow into a cranky and eccentric old lady and the family will be most mortally ashamed of me forever. All these dreadful things she said to me and more, and, oh, Marmee, I know that she’s right and I’m wrong, but I can’t stand by and watch a young man make a mockery of an old, especially so shallow a youth as young Tudor and so splendid an old man as the major, so what on earth will become of me, and what on earth am I to do?