Chapter 47
Professor Bhaer has been away for a year working hard. He and Jo wrote letters and kept hoping. The second year didn't seem to look any better as a possibility for marriage. Just as Jo was beginning to wonder how long they would have to wait, Aunt March passed away.
The first sadness of her passing faded, and her family is in better spirits, as she left her house, Plumfield, and its grounds to Jo. Initially, the family doesn't know how Jo can support the upkeep of the house and grounds, as neither she nor Professor Bhaer have the skill or the money. But Jo proposes an idea which both she and Bhaer wish for-- to open a boys school for poor boys with no mothers, who, without a good home, would never succeed. She will admit wealthy boys as well, because even they need some help, and perhaps their families can't give it to them. The idea is settled, and she and Professor Bhaer are married and settled at Plumfield with a family of six or seven boys.
Jo soon has two boys of her own, Rob and Teddy, to add to her collection.
The estate was famous for its apple picking festivals. One such festival happens five years later. The Marches, the Laurences, the Brookes, and the Bhaers and all of their boys eat and sing together. The March sisters talk about the plans they made for themselves as girls and whether they had now come true. They tell their mother that she has raised a good crop of girls, after all. "Touched to the heart, Mrs. March could only stretch out her arms, as if to gather children and grandchildren to herself, and say, with face and voice full of motherly love, gratitude, and humility-- 'Oh, my girls, however long you may live, I never can wish you a greater happiness than this!'" Chapter 47, pg. 578
Topic Tracking: Gender 9
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