Хорошие жёны / Good wives. Уровень 3

“Mercy on me, Beth loves Laurie!” she said, sitting down in her own room, pale with the shock of the discovery.

Jo turned scarlet with a sudden thought.

“If he doesn’t love her, how dreadful it will be! He must. I’ll make him! Oh dear, we are growing up. Here’s Meg married, Amy is flourishing away at Paris, and Beth is in love. I’m the only one that has sense here.”

Though Laurie flirted with Amy and joked with Jo, his manner to Beth had always been peculiarly kind and gentle. Indeed, a general impression was that he liked Jo, who, however, did not want to hear a word upon the subject.

When Laurie first went to college, he fell in love about once a month, but these small flames were brief. But later he avoided the tender subject altogether. Things were in this state when the grand discovery was made. Jo watched Laurie that night as she never did before.

As usual Beth lay on the sofa and Laurie sat in a low chair close by, amusing her with all sorts of gossip. But that evening Jo fancied that Beth’s eyes rested on the lively, dark face beside her with peculiar pleasure, and that she listened with intense interest to an account of some exciting cricket match.

“Who knows? Stranger things have happened,” thought Jo. “She will make quite an angel of him, and he will make life delightfully easy and pleasant for the dear, if they only love each other. I don’t see how he can help it.”

As everyone was out of the way but herself, Jo began to feel that she ought to go away.

Soon a form appeared beside her, and with both arms spread over the sofa back, both long legs stretched out before him, Laurie exclaimed, with a sigh of satisfaction…

“Now, good and cheap.”

“No slang,” snapped Jo.

“Come, Jo, don’t be thorny.”

“How many bouquets have you sent Miss Randal this week?”

“Not one, upon my word. She’s engaged.”

“I’m glad of it, that’s one of your foolish extravagances, sending flowers and things to girls for whom you don’t care two pins[25 - whom you don’t care two pins – до которых тебе нет дела ни на грош],” continued Jo.

“Sensible girls for whom I care whole papers of pins won’t let me send them �flowers and things’, so what can I do? My feelings need an exit.”

“Mother doesn’t approve of flirting even in fun, and you flirt desperately, Teddy.