Very likely some Mrs. Grundy will observe, “I don’t believe it, boys will be boys, young men must sow their wild oats, and women must not expect miracles.”  I dare say you don’t, Mrs. Grundy, but it’s true nevertheless.  Women work a good many miracles, and I have a persuasion that they may perform even that of raising the standard of manhood by refusing to echo such sayings.  Let the boys be boys, the longer the better, and let the young men sow their wild oats if they must.  But mothers, sisters, and friends may help to make the crop a small one, and keep many tares from spoiling the harvest, by believing, and showing that they believe, in the possibility of loyalty to the virtues which make men manliest in good women’s eyes.  If it is a feminine delusion, leave us to enjoy it while we may, for without it half the beauty and the romance of life is lost, and sorrowful forebodings would embitter all our hopes of the brave, tenderhearted little lads, who still love their mothers better than themselves and are not ashamed to own it.

Laurie thought that the task of forgetting his love for Jo would absorb all his powers for years, but to his great surprise he discovered it grew easier every day.  He refused to believe it at first, got angry with himself, and couldn’t understand it, but these hearts of ours are curious and contrary things, and time and nature work their will in spite of us.  Laurie’s heart wouldn’t ache.  The wound persisted in healing with a rapidity that astonished him, and instead of trying to forget, he found himself trying to remember.  He had not foreseen this turn of affairs, and was not prepared for it.  He was disgusted with himself, surprised at his own fickleness, and full of a queer mixture of disappointment and relief that he could recover from such a tremendous blow so soon.  He carefully stirred up the embers of his lost love, but they refused to burst into a blaze.  There was only a comfortable glow that warmed and did him good without putting him into a fever, and he was reluctantly obliged to confess that the boyish passion was slowly subsiding into a more tranquil sentiment, very tender, a little sad and resentful still, but that was sure to pass away in time, leaving a brotherly affection which would last unbroken to the end.

As the word ‘brotherly’ passed through his mind in one of his reveries, he smiled, and glanced up at the picture of Mozart that was before him . . .

“Well, he was a great man, and when he couldn’t have one sister he took the other, and was happy.”

Laurie did not utter the words, but he thought them, and the next instant kissed the little old ring, saying to himself, “No, I won’t!  I haven’t forgotten, I never can.  I’ll try again, and if that fails, why then . . .”