It was a damp, dank, dark and miserable rainy day. Exactly the sort of day Jo March hated with a vengeance.
Also, she had a terrible cold, the stuffed up nose and woolly headed kind, the kind when you were put to bed by Marmee with a hot lemon and honey, and the littlest, sweetest grey kitten tucked in beside you by Beth. Jo liked the drink, Marmee, Beth, and the kitten very much, but she most ardently didn't like the wretched cold.
The affliction and the weather combined together had made Jo highly gloomy.
Fingering the kitten's smooth ears, she gazed idly out of the big bay window and out onto the rain splattered side walk. There was nobody out walking today; no fine, fashionable ladies out strolling with their large bustles and embroidered, flamingo pink parasols, no tall, lively young men, returning home, laughing, after a splendid game of some kind.
There was only one lonely figure out there now, though, Jo noticed now, and they were covered from head to foot in a large black oilskin raincoat, the rain water running in rivulets down their arms, down their back, - in fact it was running all over them.
The figure was striding quickly along, sifting something Jo couldn't make out from her bed through their gloved fingers. The covered head was bent towards the ground.
Who was it? Jo mused. A soldier, come home from the battlefield to his family? Jo smiled at the thought of such happiness the family would have.
Or…no! The figure is a pirate, returned not from battle but the high seas! No, a castaway, a captive, a dashing rogue, a murderous villain, a vengeful ghost!
Immensely wonderful and bright images of high adventure and romance danced in Jo's fevered head, and she shivered from top to pale pink toe in pure delight at the mere thought of such things.
All were wonderful ideas for new stories and plays. Oh, if only she was well!
But suddenly and unromantically, all such thoughts were stifled by a particularly large, noisy sneeze. She settled back against her pillows, fishing for her flimsy, blue lace trimmed handkerchief, using it to pinch her nose hard, whilst breathing out, to clear her blocked nose, just as her elder sister Meg entered the room.
"Oh Jo, must you trumpet so?" she admonished grandly. "Really, it is not at all lady like."
Jo rolled her dark brown eyes. "It is necessary, dearest Meg, as you well know," she sniffed in most un-Jo ish way. "You trumpet enough yourself when you have cold too!"
Meg agreed that this must be so, and she had only come to see her to ask if she wanted another drink anyway.
"No thank you, Meg," Jo sighed petulantly, for she truly was out of spirits, "no, thank you!"
"Alright," said Meg, and as she vacated the room Jo resumed her former occupation of the oil skin clad stranger trudging down the rainy street once more.
She tried to recreate, to conjure up again the dazzling images of the strangers' life, but her fuzzy brain simply would not oblige for her. "Behave!" she commanded it sternly, but her mind must have been feeling especially truculent that day, thus it produced nothing.
She groaned deeply, and shut her tired hazel eyes in the hope of sleep, and therefore dreams.
She would have even welcomed a nightmare with open arms.
Just as she was about to doze off, she heard a sharp bang on the window, followed swiftly by a series of quick taps, and a shout of "hey!"
Damn! Thought Jo angrily. Am I never to get a moments peace?
She swung her long, gangly legs out of her bed, and strode over to the window, albeit a little shakily, for the cold was making her a little dizzy and light headed.
She opened her mouth, ready to give whoever was out there a piece of her mind, when she saw that it was only Laurie.
"Jo!" Laurie grinned, using his left hand to push his unruly curls from his face, his black eyes twinkling. "I heard you were ill, so I came to see you, but when Meg went up to see if you would have me, she came back and said you were too grumpy and ill!"
Jo laughed aloud, truly pleased to see someone other tha her family.
"Well, of course," Laurie continued brightly, "I couldn't resist seeing you in a temper, so I decided to speak to you anyway!"
"Meg didn't tell me you were here," Jo stated. "She only asked me if I wanted another drink! If I'd have known you were here…"
"Never mind," he smiled. "And anyway, I saw you watching me as I walked down the road."
Jo laughed again, as she realised that the oil skin clad coated stranger had been none other than Laurie!
"It was you!" she remarked, just as Laurie said:
"I came to see you, because you saw me, when I was ill, remember? When you threw a snowball at my window?"
They both laughed at the sound of their voices over lapping each other, and then quickly repeated what they had said. "What was me?" he queried with a curious smile, and so Jo proceeded to tell him the tale of how bored and grumpy she had been, and how she had tried to turn the lonely figure on the sidewalk into an object of great interest, which made Laurie laugh and laugh.
Then Laurie sneezed.
"Gosh!" Jo proclaimed. "It is still raining, and you are out there in it. You will catch a cold too, you are getting so wet! You must come in, Laurie, I don't mind, and I'm sure Marmee won't give a hoot."
"No, no," Laurie said resignedly with another shake of his head. "Brooke is beckoning me through the window, and I can see your sister Meg watching him from behind the door downstairs."
"Meg!" Jo gasped mischievously. "Watching over John Brooke! Good gracious! Oh really! How romantic!"
Laurie snorted. "Well, that is debatable," he sighed, and then pulled his hood up once more. "Farewell, Jo!" he called. "Don't forget to rest!"
"Bye, bye, Laurie," Jo smiled, her voice wavering a little, thanks to her sore throat. She watched him vault the fence, before turning into the doorway of his house. He turned, and gave her a small wave, which she swiftly returned.
She walked across the room, and then clambered back into her soft, warm bed, feeling considerably happier than she had done the last time she did that.