I won't go before seventeen, anyway." "Aren't you but fifteen ?" asked Jo, looking at the tall lad, whom she had imagined seventeen already.
"Sixteen, next month." "How I wish I was going to college! You don't look as if you liked it." "I hate it! Nothing but grinding or skylarking.

And I don't like the way fellows do either, in this country." "What do you like ?" "To live in Italy, and to enjoy myself in my own way." Jo wanted very much to ask what his own way was, but his black brows looked rather threatening as he knit them, so she changed the subject by saying, as her foot kept time, "That's a splendid polka! Why don't you go and try it ?" "If you will come too," he answered, with a gallant little bow.
"I can't, for I told Meg I wouldn't, because..." There Jo stopped, and looked undecided whether to tell or to laugh.
"Because, what ?" "You won't tell ?" "Never!" "Well, I have a bad trick of standing before the fire, and so I burn my frocks, and I scorched this one, and though it's nicely mended, it shows, and Meg told me to keep still so no one would see it.

You may laugh, if you want to.

It is funny, I know." But Laurie didn't laugh.

He only looked down a minute, and the expression of his face puzzled Jo when he said very gently, "Never mind that.