PREVIOUSLY: We heard from father via letter, and he ended it by saying how proud he was of his “little women.”
Everybody sniffed when they came to that part; Jo wasn’t ashamed of the great tear that dropped off the end of her nose, and Amy never minded the rumpling of her curls as she hid her face on her mother’s shoulder and sobbed out, “I am a selfish pig! But I’ll truly try to be better, so he mayn’t be disappointed in me by and by.”
“We all will!” cried Meg. “I think too much of my looks, and hate to work, but won’t any more, if I can help it.”
“I’ll try to be what he loves to call me, ‘a little woman,’ and not be rough and wild; but do my duty here instead of wanting to be somewhere else,” said Jo, thinking that keeping her temper at home was a much harder task than facing a rebel or two down South. 1
Beth said nothing, but wiped away her tears with the blue army-sock, and began to knit with all her might, losing no time in doing the duty that lay nearest her, while she resolved in her quiet little soul to be all that father hoped to find her when the year brought round the happy coming home. Because the happy coming home must occur, mustn’t it?
I liked the place where the bundles fell off and tumbled down stairs.
Mrs. March broke the silence that followed Jo’s words, by saying in her cheery voice, “Do you remember how you used to play Pilgrim’s Progress 2 when you were little things? 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 house-top, where you had all the lovely things you could collect to make a Celestial City.”
Yeah, I’m a little bit of a gamer.
“What fun it was, especially going by the lions, fighting Apollyon, and passing through the Valley where the hobgoblins were,” said Jo. 3
“I liked the place where the bundles fell off and tumbled down stairs,” said Meg.
“My favorite part was when we came out on the flat roof where our flowers and arbors, and pretty things were, and all stood and sung for joy up there in the sunshine,” said Beth, smiling, as if that pleasant moment had come back to her.
“I don’t remember much about it, except that I was afraid of the cellar and the dark entry, and always liked the cake and milk we had up at the top. If I wasn’t too old for such things, I’d rather like to play it over again,” said Amy, who began talk of renouncing childish things at the mature age of twelve.
1 Hm.
2 The Pilgrim’s Progress! Per the Wiki: “The Pilgrim’s Progress is a 1678 Christian allegory written by John Bunyan. It is commonly regarded as one of the most significant works of Protestant devotional literature and of wider early modern English literature.” All you really need to know here is that 1. The girls read it and play-acted it, and 2. Alcott references the text heavily in this book. I completely omitted it, but the Preface has a verse from Mr. Bunyan, and some further chapter titles will borrow from him as well.
3 The exciting tales mentioned here do not reflect the actual excitement level of Protestantism.