Jo and Laurie sat outside, a blanket spread out beneath them. It had been quite a trek to get to this quiet spot in the woods, and Jo had spoiled the hem of her skirt with mud in the process, but the peace and solitude were well worth it. Laurie had departed for Harvard over a month before, and the rush of lectures and new friends had kept him from visiting for that length of time, though he had promised her he would come sooner.

"Some of the professors are regular dragons," he said, for he had been filling Jo in on the details of college life with a rapidity and excitement more characteristic of a young boy than any sort of scholar. "And as a first year, it's easy enough to stumble into their lairs. There's nobody about telling us who chooses to assign two-hundred pages of reading in a single evening, or expects that we will be able to recite the laws of calculus backwards in Latin."

"Teddy!" Jo said, with a sternness with that she had to force, for it was terribly difficult to be stern when Laurie was smiling at her. "Don't exaggerate so! You didn't go to college just to dress fashionably and play billiards, did you?"

"Who said a thing about billiards?" Asked Laurie, looking affronted.

"It's merely that I've had time to think about it, and I think you benefit from stern handling," Said Jo, not quite looking at Laurie, for by saying it she meant him. She had been thinking of him, and she did not want to admit it, any more than she wanted to admit to the womanish fears she harbored about his well-being now that he was so far away.

Perhaps Laurie knew, for he patted her on the arm, and said in a tone he did not often use, "Nobody handles me as well as you do, Jo."

He spoke with a terrible sincerity, which made her nervous.

"Tell me more about the other boys at the school," Jo said, quickly, lest he find some excuse to wax emotional, as he looked wont to do. He had not let go of her arm, but grasped it lightly, and Jo leaned away from his touch, quickly busying herself with picking some of the flowers that grew beside them on the ground.

"Well, I share a building with about ten of them. Most of them sleep four to a room, but Grandfather insisted on a private apartment, so I'd have a place to study. It's very roomy and comfortable, and the lads come in to talk after classes let out. They're a good bunch, I'll wager. Some of them really do want to study business. There's one who's no more interested in it than I am! He wants to become a violinist. At least his father permitted him to bring his instrument with him."

"I'd think a violin is a good bit easier to carry off to school than a piano," said Jo. "Not that I don't like the idea of your being at liberty to play as you please. I wager it keeps you out of worse mischief. Marmee agrees, though she'd never say so."

"There you go, talking about me and mischief again," said Laurie, who had the grace to laugh. "Just what troubles are you imagining for me, miss?"

"I hardly know where to start," Said Jo, a wicked smile beginning on her own face. "You might burn the building down, or accidentally hand one of you professors a business ledger covered in nothing but musical notes."

"Or a might fall in love," Said Laurie, almost casually.

"You will not!" Jo could not help the flush that rose on her face any more than she could explain it.

"Why?" Laurie asked, raising his eyebrows in the most unforgivable way.

"Because it's silly, and you're too young for it."

"I won't always be."

Now, this was a new sort of conversation to be having with Laurie, who had not once spoken to her of romance before departing for school. It made Jo's heart beat faster in a way that she did not like. After all, she had barely resigned herself to Meg's marriage to John Brooke, and the last thing she wanted was for Laurie to hurry up and follow suit.

"Please tell me you will never become one of those people who never speaks or thinks of anything other than who they mean to make a match with," said Jo, who could not speak lightly, for she meant every word.

"I should think there's a little more to me than that."

"Overall, yes, but it seems that everyone must become completely unreasonable at some point in their life, and by the time they've come to their senses, they've run off and gotten married."

"Well, since you say everyone, you're included Jo."

"I'm not. If I were away at college I would concentrate on studying, and improving myself," said Jo, who not having any hope of ever truly entering such an institution, had firmly decided that if only she could, it would make a saint of her.

"All of the time?" Asked Laurie, who knew better.

"I suppose so, yes."

"I'd like to take you along with me, and see what scrapes you would actually get into. We could paint a mustache on your face, as we used to do when we played theatre, and no one would be the wiser."

"I wish I could. I may fail at all fashionable accomplishments, but I think a man's education would suit me just fine."

"I have no doubt it would,"

With that, the two of them fell to their own respective reveries, which we will examine presently.

Jo was busy imagining a life made up of dusty libraries, and great tombs on all manner of subjects (none of which, it should be noted, were half as dull as the program of studies which had been forced upon Laurie). She was thinking of every story she'd ever read in which a woman played a man, and regretting that her body was no longer as thoroughly boyish as it had been when she was fifteen.

Laurie was thinking of Jo's hair, and how he would like to touch it.

After a minute or two, desire won out, and he decided to give it a try, and felt Jo stiffen.

"Teddy, what are you doing," She said, giving him a rather confused excuse for a glare.

"It's getting longer," he said, feeling rather silly.

"Hair tends to do that."

She ran her hand through the place where he had tried to wind his fingers, and shook her head slightly, as if to erase the evidence of his touch.

"Really," Jo said, as lightly as she could. "Next you'll be making enlightening comments on the state of my dress."

"I thought girls liked that sort of thing."

"I don't. Besides, I have three sisters. I can have my fill of that sort of thing, without it coming from you."

"Have it your way then," said Laurie.

Jo looked at him once more, fully expecting to see the face of a boy who pouted when he didn't get what he wanted. To her surprise, though, he merely seemed thoughtful, and measurably older than he'd been when they last parted. It wasn't something she liked, for as much as she wanted to believe that the two of them would never change or separate, it gave her the impression that they were doing both already.

"It's getting late," She said. "Let's go, and we can do something else together tomorrow."

As they stood, he reached out for her arm, which she gave him automatically. After all, they had often walked arm and arm over the years, and she had never thought anything of it. For the first time in ages, however, she did think about it, and wonder if it wasn't something to be avoided in the future.