Meg and John had a long engagement—three years to be exact—
since her parents, though they accepted John as their future son-in-law, wished the couple to wait until Meg turned twenty before they married.
Now Meg was old enough, and the happy but eager couple were free to take their vows.
"Can you believe that in one month I shall be Mrs. John Brookes?"
Meg gushed to her fiance one glorious spring day as they took a walk around the Laurence garden.
"I wish it were today, this moment," John said tenderly as he wrapped his arm around her waist.
During the three years of their engagement, Meg had grown from a sweet, mild-mannered girl into a capable, beautiful, young woman.
"Well, I don't," Meg said very unromantically,
"because there is so much to do, I don't have a moment to spare if I am going to get everything ready before we get married."
So John patiently listened as his soon-to-be bride told him about the countless number of things that needed to be done before their wedding day.
One person who still prayed that the wedding day would never come was Jo who, despite the past three years,
refused to accept that Meg would become a wife very soon.
"Look at those two! It's rather disgusting, it is," Jo mumbled miserably as she spied on her sister and Brookes from the safety of the March home.
Jabbing more of the air than the potato she was supposed to be peeling,
Jo carelessly tossed the vegetable into a basket of half-peeled other ones
that she had butchered while watching Meg and Brookes wander through the Laurences' garden.
"Jo? Are you done with the potatoes yet?" Beth asked as she and Amy walked into the kitchen wearing aprons.
It was clear that the other girls had also changed in the past three years.
Jo, who had long thick hair again, had pulled it into a neat, ladylike bun.
Her face had softened, and she seemed calmer, more comfortable with herself and her body.
Beth was a little taller, though very thin and without the glow of health that her sisters had.
Still, she always wore a smile on her face and never held back from saying a kind word or performing a good deed for others.
But the most remarkable change was in Amy.
She had always been pretty, but now she had turned into the kind of stunning beauty that artists dream about painting,
poets are inspired to create poems for, and singers are moved to write songs about.
All traces of the old Amy, including her tantrums and whining, were replaced by a sophisticated, polished, well-mannered young woman.
"Jo! You've stripped half the peel off this innocent vegetable and turned it into some modern art sculpture!"
Amy picked up a battered potato, part of its peel dangling loosely, as Beth giggled and picked up some others in similar shape.
"Huh?" Jo tore her eyes away from the window to see what Amy was talking about.
"We'd better decide upon an alternative for the potato pancakes then," sighed Amy, wrinkling her perfect forehead at her sister.
"It's all their fault!" Jo pointed accusingly at Meg and John far off in the distance, unaware that they were being blamed for the state of the potatoes.
"Oh, Jo," Amy remarked, shaking her head as she left the kitchen.
Beth stood for a moment with Jo, wishing she could erase the pain on her sister's face and the deeper one in her heart.
"As much as we'd like it, nothing stays the same, Jo," she said softly.
"Letting go of something doesn't mean you're going to lose it.
It means you are allowing it to find another home," she added with wisdom beyond her years.
For Jo, Beth's words rang true in so many ways, not only concerning Meg.
Aunt March had taken such a fancy to Amy during the brief time she stayed with her while Beth was sick,
that the old lady had replaced Jo with Amy as her companion.
At first Jo was upset, but then she decided to view the matter positively and chose to use her time wisely by focusing on her writing.
"Is Laurie coming home this weekend?" asked Amy, tying her wavy blonde hair back in a green ribbon that matched her dress
as she got ready to go to Aunt March's the next morning.
"I hope not, but I wouldn't be surprised," Jo answered.
She knew that although Laurie was away now at college, he insisted on coming home every week to, as he said, "get away from those horrid books."
"Well, he's promised to escort me and Aunt March to the theater and she's hoping it will be this Saturday," said Amy.
Yawning, uninterested in the trivial worries of Aunt March's life, Jo flipped through her book and replied sarcastically,
"I'm certain that Laurie will be thrilled to oblige Aunt March's every wish."
Thankfully some things hadn't changed, such as Jo's passion for writing and her favorite spot to do it in.
Armed with her pen, Jo sat upstairs in her sanctuary,
her hand flying over the paper as she tried to finish another chapter in the novel she was currently working on.
With the confidence she gained from selling some of her short stories, Jo decided to move on to longer pieces of writing.
She was about to complete the last page when someone knocked at her door.
"Whoever it is had better go away," Jo called out threateningly, as she refused to get up to see who it was.
The knocker persisted, this time with a series of short taps in the rhythm of a well-known children's song.
"Argh!" Jo threw her pen across the room and stomped over to unlock the door and unleash her fury.
"Surprise!" Laurie shoved his face in as soon as the door was unlocked and tackled Jo with such a hug that she didn't have a chance to react.
Laurie, now twenty, the same age as Meg, had indeed blossomed into a handsome young man.
He was very tall with broad shoulders and wavy dark hair that constantly fell over his left eye, giving him a very romantic look.
Many girls at his college worshiped him as if he were a Roman god, and Laurie did not discourage their attention.
However, to Jo and the girls, he was still silly Laurie, which he did not mind, because he could comfortably be himself around them.
"Do they not teach you to read in college?" Jo asked, pointing to the sign she had hung on the door that read: Interrupt At Own Risk.
Shrugging his shoulders, Laurie swung a brown bag in front of Jo's face.
"You don't want to be interrupted even for this?" he teased.
"Oh, Laurie! Thank you!" Jo snatched the bag from his hand.
Like a hungry lion, she nearly ripped the bag open and shoved two candies into her mouth,
sucking one in each cheek, making her look like an overgrown chipmunk.
Meg had put all the girls on a diet before the wedding, forbidding any sweets in the house.
Jo seldom had cravings, but candies were something she could not live without.
Thanking Laurie for sharing the forbidden treats, Jo was glad to have him to rely on when things got tough.