Jo peered around the door before she tip-toed her way down the stairs to the hall. The floorboards creaked under her feet and she cringed at the noise just as her mother appeared at the landing, waiting by Jo's bedroom door.
"Jo dear did you sleep in the garret again?" Mrs March asked, shifting the basket she carried on her hip.
"Mhm," Jo nodded vaguely with a tight smile, trying to slip past her mother unable to lie outright to such an honest-expecting face.
"Wait," Marmee put an arm out before Jo could make her hasty retreat. She blinked back at her mother's odd look of appraisal as the older woman scanned her up and down. "Hannah's setting breakfast and the babies need their milk."
Jo smiled again and her mother let her pass. "I'll be right down," she said closing the door as her mother went into Amy's room to freshen the sheets. Hitting her head on the back of the bedroom door Jo sighed at her narrow escape. How had her mother almost caught her in the last stretch she didn't know but looking around her room in the morning light she didn't feel nearly so threatened as she had the night before. Beth's dolls grinned vacantly at the walls and the yellow paint coloured a gentle glow across the furniture.
"Really it's quite harmless," Jo frowned at herself before she kicked off the door and went for her dresses. Looking down at her night clothes she found to her horror a rather conspicuous amount of leaves caught in the tiny rips of her gown.
"Oh no," she moaned, pulling the greenery from her cotton dress, catching a twig when she ran a hand through her hair in consternation. Her mother had surely seen these.
Unable to do anything else Jo shirked her nightclothes for a day dress, this time one with a crinoline. She would at least be presentable as punishment for her complete lapse in judgment. Tying the netted skirt around her waist she pulled the petticoats over her head and then slipped on her usual camisole. The skirt came next and Jo settled on a cream blouse that covered as much of her neck as possible. She felt ridiculously overdressed in contrast to yesterday's loose-waisted dress that touched her ankles but Jo was determined to feel human again and normality was in wide skirts and conservative collars, not in best-friend's beds and childish comforts. Jo pulled her hair into its net and pricked herself several times before she appeared before Hannah with Daisy in her arms and Demi on her hip asking for bottles and a spare hand.
An hour later Jo sat on the carpet in the front parlour trying her darndest to patch Demi's trousers as the twins crawled around her grabbing with grubby hands anything that caught their interest. Jo laughed when she saw Demi's prize of a mothball before snatching the dangerous item up.
"Now how did you find this?"
Demi squealed his protest before a particularly shiny brass sofa-leg caught his attention and he bumbled off calling, "Mine Jo!" Jo shook her head at a loss for the strange things toddlers found and swiftly rescued a rag-doll's head from Daisy's mouth.
"That's not for chewing dear," she said pulling the soft-stuffed head out of Daisy's chomping jaw. Daisy had other ideas and she hurried off with her waddling walk under Demi's sofa's arm to chew her doll in peace repeating her brother's call of "Mine! Mine!" Thwarted Jo simply frowned and went back to her sewing. "Fine, do as you please!"
"Spoiling the children Jo March! Well I never!"
Jo twisted to see Laurie leaning against the doorframe mocking her in a very old impression.
"It's hardly fair you get to spoil them and I must always set things right," she complained as he moved to sit beside her on the floor. "Really Teddy, you'd let them commit murder if I had my back turned even for a second."
"Ha!" he cried, digging his elbow into her side. "Quite fairly with all you nagging, young miss." Jo glared at him when his movement upset her finger and she pricked herself with the needle.
"Well someone has to provide a moral compass when you're so decidedly against anything that isn't letting them have their own way."
"Brave words for someone who's letting Daisy chew her way through the fourth doll. Shall we set this old argument away? I fear your fingers are baring the brunt again," Laurie took her hand, frowning at the tiny marks across them. "Looking at this I'd think you'd never sewn anything in your life."
Jo swatted him and took her hand back when his tease turned tender. She pulled them off the ground, depositing her needlework on a high table edge away from little searching hands. Each took a child and sat on the sofa, Laurie bouncing his knees much to Demi's entertainment.
"I thought you liked my patchwork."
"Never said otherwise, only your fingers don't agree with the business."
"Pooh, I pricked myself with my hairpins is all," Jo explained as she held Daisy's hands in hers. It seemed all the twins liked to do was touch and grab and pull and paw of late. Laurie looked over at the offending pins in his companion's hair behind the hand Demi stuck on his face.
"Thought you looked different," he said quietly and not without a little displeasure.
Jo bristled at his tone and informed him quite firmly it was hardly anything out of the ordinary and why should it matter at any rate? "You're over early," she said by way of changing the topic.
Laurie pulled Demi off him, sitting the toddler on his knee at an easier distance. When Jo met his eyes she knew what was coming and stood quickly mumbling about the apples she meant to stew. Catching Laurie's odd look she let Daisy back down on the carpet and hurried to the kitchen wondering what made her hands shake when she reached for her pinafore.
"Don't you want to know why?" Laurie's breath ghosted across her shoulder an instant later and she turned to find him closer than expected.
"I-"
"Laurie! You've come early today," Mrs March startled the pair and Laurie stepped back to greet the woman warmly. She embraced the boy, sending her daughter that same look from earlier over his back.
"I hope you don't mind but I thought Jo could use a hand today. We're stewing apples," he added with a wicked look over his shoulder at Jo who stood as red as a tomato.
"Aren't you kind," Mrs March smiled, patting the tall boy's arm as she reached between them into the closet for a broom. "See that she doesn't use the salt this time," she added for Laurie's ears which made the fellow smile to himself.
"Help me with this, won't you?" Jo put her arms through the pinafore as her mother gave her one last all-knowing look that left Jo mystified as her boy tied a decent knot.
"That should do it," he said, smoothing out the material across her shoulder when she watched her mother depart through the front door. Turning back to Laurie she frowned at his lingering hands and took off without digress to the backyard.
"Jo," he hurried after her and she fumed at her sudden jitters. Really hadn't she told him to wait just last night?
"Bring a basket," she called behind her halfway across the lawn, her hooped skirt swirling in wake as she carried on with the charade of finding apples in spring. She had to get a hold of herself before he had a chance to turn the world on its head again. And everything had been going so well until yesterday.
A/N: hey guys just a question, do you use 'backyard' in America? It just sounds really aussie to me when I say it but that could be coz everything sounds like that… I dunno I use it a lot in these stories and I don't even know if you have a different term.
Oh! Also I did a picture that kinda relates to this story but you'll have to backspace the spaces in the address (also I hate how I drew Laurie but I couldn't get him how I wanted): http:// .com /art/ Grief-126894596