“What a good girl you are, Amy!” said Jo, with a repentant glance from her own damaged costume to that of her sister, which was fresh and spotless still.  “I wish it was as easy for me to do little things to please people as it is for you.  I think of them, but it takes too much time to do them, so I wait for a chance to confer a great favor, and let the small ones slip, but they tell best in the end, I fancy.”

Amy smiled and was mollified at once, saying with a maternal air, “Women should learn to be agreeable, particularly poor ones, for they have no other way of repaying the kindnesses they receive.  If you’d remember that, and practice it, you’d be better liked than I am, because there is more of you.”

“I’m a crotchety old thing, and always shall be, but I’m willing to own that you are right, only it’s easier for me to risk my life for a person than to be pleasant to him when I don’t feel like it.  It’s a great misfortune to have such strong likes and dislikes, isn’t it?”

“It’s a greater not to be able to hide them.  I don’t mind saying that I don’t approve of Tudor any more than you do, but I’m not called upon to tell him so.  Neither are you, and there is no use in making yourself disagreeable because he is.”

“But I think girls ought to show when they disapprove of young men, and how can they do it except by their manners?  Preaching does not do any good, as I know to my sorrow, since I’ve had Teddie to manage.  But there are many little ways in which I can influence him without a word, and I say we ought to do it to others if we can.”

“Teddy is a remarkable boy, and can’t be taken as a sample of other boys,” said Amy, in a tone of solemn conviction, which would have convulsed the ‘remarkable boy’ if he had heard it.  “If we were belles, or women of wealth and position, we might do something, perhaps, but for us to frown at one set of young gentlemen because we don’t approve of them, and smile upon another set because we do, wouldn’t have a particle of effect, and we should only be considered odd and puritanical.”

“So we are to countenance things and people which we detest, merely because we are not belles and millionaires, are we?  That’s a nice sort of morality.”

“I can’t argue about it, I only know that it’s the way of the world, and people who set themselves against it only get laughed at for their pains.  I don’t like reformers, and I hope you never try to be one.”

“I do like them, and I shall be one if I can, for in spite of the laughing the world would never get on without them.  We can’t agree about that, for you belong to the old set, and I to the new.  You will get on the best, but I shall have the liveliest time of it.  I should rather enjoy the brickbats and hooting, I think.”

“Well, compose yourself now, and don’t worry Aunt with your new ideas.”

“I’ll try not to, but I’m always possessed to burst out with some particularly blunt speech or revolutionary sentiment before her.  It’s my doom, and I can’t help it.”