“It’s evident he doesn’t look in his glass before coming down,” thought Jo, with a smile, as he said “Goot efening,” and sat soberly down,quite unconscious of the ludicrous contrast between his subject and his headgear, for he was going to read her the Death of Wallenstein.
She said nothing at first,for she liked to hear him laugh out his big,hearty laugh when anything funny happened,so she left him to discover it for himself,and presently forgot all about it,for to hear a German read Schiller is rather an absorbing occupation.After the reading came the lesson,which was a lively one,for Jo was in a gay mood that night,and the cocked hat kept her eyes dancing with merriment.The Professor didn’t know what to make of her,and stopped at last to ask with an air of mild surprise that was irresistible. . .
“Mees Marsch, for what do you laugh in your master’s face?Haf you no respect for me, that you go on so bad?”
“How can I be respectful, Sir,when you forget to take your hat off?” said Jo.
Lifting his hand to his head,the absent-minded Professor gravely felt and removed the little cocked hat,looked at it a minute,and then threw back his head and laughed like a merry bass viol.
“Ah!I see him now, it is that imp Tina who makes me a fool with my cap.Well, it is nothing, but see you,if this lesson goes not well, you too shall wear him.”
But the lesson did not go at all for a few minutes because Mr.Bhaer caught sight of a picture on the hat,and unfolding it, said with great disgust,“I wish these papers did not come in the house.They are not for children to see,nor young people to read. It is not well,and I haf no patience with those who make this harm.”
Jo glanced at the sheet and saw a pleasing illustration composed of a lunatic,a corpse, a villain, and a viper. She did not like it,but the impulse that made her turn it over was not one of displeasure but fear,because for a minute she fancied the paper was the Volcano.It was not, however,and her panic subsided as she remembered that even if it had been and one of her own tales in it, there would have been no name to betray her. She had betrayed herself, however, by a look and a blush, for though an absent man, the Professor saw a good deal more than people fancied. He knew that Jo wrote, and had met her down among the newspaper offices more than once, but as she never spoke of it, he asked no questions in spite of a strong desire to see her work. Now it occurred to him that she was doing what she was ashamed to own, and it troubled him. He did not say to himself, “It is none of my business. I’ve no right to say anything,” as many people would have done. He only remembered that she was young and poor, a girl far away from mother’s love and father’s care, and he was moved to help her with an impulse as quick and natural as that which would prompt him to put out his hand to save a baby from a puddle. All this flashed through his mind in a minute, but not a trace of it appeared in his face, and by the time the paper was turned, and Jo’s needle threaded, he was ready to say quite naturally, but very gravely...
“Yes, you are right to put it from you.I do not think that good young girls should see such things.They are made pleasant to some,but I would more rather give my boys gunpowder to play with than this bad trash.”
“All may not be bad, only silly, you know,and if there is a demand for it,I don’t see any harm in supplying it.Many very respectable people make an honest living out of what are called sensation stories,” said Jo, scratching gathers so energetically that a row of little slits followed her pin.
“There is a demand for whisky,but I think you and I do not care to sell it.If the respectable people knew what harm they did,they would not feel that the living was honest.They haf no right to put poison in the sugarplum,and let the small ones eat it. No,they should think a little,and sweep mud in the street before they do this thing.”
Mr. Bhaer spoke warmly, and walked to the fire,crumpling the paper in his hands. Jo sat still,looking as if the fire had come to her,for her cheeks burned long after the cocked hat had turned to smoke and gone harmlessly up the chimney.
“I should like much to send all the rest after him,” muttered the Professor,coming back with a relieved air.
Jo thought what a blaze her pile of papers upstairs would make,and her hard-earned money lay rather heavily on her conscience at that minute.Then she thought consolingly to herself,“Mine are not like that, they are only silly,never bad, so I won’t be worried,” and taking up her book, she said,with a studious face, “Shall we go on, Sir?I’ll be very good and proper now.”
“I shall hope so,” was all he said,but he meant more than she imagined, and the grave,kind look he gave her made her feel as if the words Weekly Volcano were printed in large type on her forehead.
As soon as she went to her room, she got out her papers,and carefully reread every one of her stories.Being a little shortsighted, Mr.Bhaer sometimes used eye glasses,and Jo had tried them once,smiling to see how they magnified the fine print of her book.Now she seemed to have on the Professor’s mental or moral spectacles also,for the faults of these poor stories glared at her dreadfully and filled her with dismay.
“They are trash, and will soon be worse trash if I go on,for each is more sensational than the last.I’ve gone blindly on, hurting myself and other people,for the sake of money. I know it’s so,for I can’t read this stuff in sober earnest without being horribly ashamed of it, and what should I do if they were seen at home or Mr. Bhaer got hold of them?”
Jo turned hot at the bare idea,and stuffed the whole bundle into her stove,nearly setting the chimney afire with the blaze.
“Yes, that’s the best place for such inflammable nonsense.I’d better burn the house down, I suppose,than let other people blow themselves up with my gunpowder,” she thought as she watched the Demon of the Jura whisk away,a little black cinder with fiery eyes.
But when nothing remained of all her three month’s work except a heap of ashes and the money in her lap, Jo looked sober, as she sat on the floor, wondering what she ought to do about her wages.
“I think I haven’t done much harm yet,and may keep this to pay for my time,” she said,after a long meditation, adding impatiently,“I almost wish I hadn’t any conscience,it’s so inconvenient.If I didn’t care about doing right,and didn’t feel uncomfortable when doing wrong,I should get on capitally.I can’t help wishing sometimes,that Mother and Father hadn’t been so particular about such things. ”
Ah, Jo, instead of wishing that,thank God that ‘Father and Mother were particular’,and pity from your heart those who have no such guardians to hedge them round with principles which may seem like prison walls to impatient youth, but which will prove sure foundations to build character upon in womanhood.
Jo wrote no more sensational stories,deciding that the money did not pay for her share of the sensation,but going to the other extreme,as is the way with people of her stamp,she took a course of Mrs. Sherwood, Miss Edgeworth,and Hannah More, and then produced a tale which might have been more properly called an essay or a sermon, so intensely moral was it. She had her doubts about it from the beginning, for her lively fancy and girlish romance felt as ill at ease in the new style as she would have done masquerading in the stiff and cumbrous costume of the last century. She sent this didactic gem to several markets, but it found no purchaser, and she was inclined to agree with Mr. Dashwood that morals didn’t sell.