United States or French Polynesia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Then he tied them up, saying, with the happy look Jo liked to see, "Please give these to your mother, and tell her I like the medicine she sent me very much." They found Mr. Laurence standing before the fire in the great drawing room, but Jo's attention was entirely absorbed by a grand piano, which stood open. "Do you play?" she asked, turning to Laurie with a respectful expression.
Jo Hertz was a Loop-hound. On the occasion of those sparse first nights granted the metropolis of the Middle West he was always present, third row, aisle, left. When a new loop café was opened Jo's table always commanded an unobstructed view of anything worth viewing.
They all loved it, for it was a family refuge, and one corner had always been Jo's favorite lounging place. Among the many pillows that adorned the venerable couch was one, hard, round, covered with prickly horsehair, and furnished with a knobby button at each end.
When at last they reached Jo's apartment they were flushed, nervous, apprehensive. But he had not yet come in. So they waited. No, they were not staying to dinner with their brother, they told the relieved houseman. Stell and Eva, sunk in rose-colored cushions, viewed the place with disgust and some mirth. They rather avoided each other's eyes. "Carrie ought to be here," Eva said.
"Jo's still too sick to write," he announced. "But she's gettin' better right along. She told me to tell you that what you wrote was fierce, and that you was too greedy. That's only what Jo said. Don't take it out on me. She said she'd be willin' to let you have a fourth, over an' above all expenses." "Well, she'll do nothing of the sort!" Lucy cut in hotly.
Poor Jo's bright summer went out long ago; and both light and warmth were gone, never to come back again, when old Martha died! and all's night to Jo, and that's how I know what it is to be in darkness all the time"; and as little Alice made this little speech about poor blind Jo, the beggar-man, her lovely face looked thoughtful beyond its years; and, as she finished, the Captain saw a tear stealing from her soft blue eye for poor Jo's sake; and he caught her in his arms right off, without stopping to think at all what he was doing, and he kissed away the tear; and, as he did it, a much bigger one came tearing out of his own great hazel eye, and hurried down into his shaggy beard to hide, as if it were quite frightened at what it had been doing with itself.
Then Jo's mother died, leaving him handicapped by a death-bed promise, the three sisters and a three-story-and-basement house on Calumet Avenue. Jo's wrinkle became a fixture. Death-bed promises should be broken as lightly as they are seriously made. The dead have no right to lay their clammy fingers upon the living. "Joey," she had said, in her high, thin voice, "take care of the girls."
Manliness, in poor Jo's mind, consisted of swagger, quiet insolence, cool cursing, and general godlessness.
Eva always let her sleep until ten. This was Jo's household, and he was the nominal head of it. But it was an empty title. The three women dominated his life. They weren't consciously selfish. If you had called them cruel they would have put you down as mad.
Business, with them, was a profession a finely graded and balanced thing, differing from Jo's clumsy, down-hill style as completely as does the method of a great criminal detective differ from that of a village constable. They would listen, restively, and say, "Uh-uh," at intervals, and at the first chance they would sort of fade out of the room, with a meaning glance at their wives.
Word Of The Day