1 When Jo came home that spring, she had been struck with the change in Beth.
2 She is coming in the spring, and I mean that you shall be all ready to see and enjoy her.
3 The warm spring sunshine brought out all sorts of aspiring ideas, tender hopes, and happy thoughts.
4 All sorts of pleasant things happened about that time, for the new friendship flourished like grass in spring.
5 The correspondence flourished famously, and letters flew to and fro with unfailing regularity all through the early spring.
6 As spring came on, a new set of amusements became the fashion, and the lengthening days gave long afternoons for work and play of all sorts.
7 But she certainly did grow a little pale and pensive that spring, lost much of her relish for society, and went out sketching alone a good deal.
8 She is going in the spring when the opera comes, and it will be perfectly splendid, if Mother only lets me go, answered Meg, cheering up at the thought.
9 The hall was empty, and they had a grand polka, for Laurie danced well, and taught her the German step, which delighted Jo, being full of swing and spring.
10 In a postscript she desired him not to tell Amy that Beth was worse, she was coming home in the spring and there was no need of saddening the remainder of her stay.
11 How they ever grew up alive in that whirlpool of boys was a mystery to their grandma and aunts, but they flourished like dandelions in spring, and their rough nurses loved and served them well.
12 So Jo, feeling that her late lessons in cookery were to do her honor, went to preside over the coffeepot, while the children collected dry sticks, and the boys made a fire and got water from a spring near by.
13 But a bird sang blithely on a budding bough, close by, the snowdrops blossomed freshly at the window, and the spring sunshine streamed in like a benediction over the placid face upon the pillow, a face so full of painless peace that those who loved it best smiled through their tears, and thanked God that Beth was well at last.
14 So the spring days came and went, the sky grew clearer, the earth greener, the flowers were up fairly early, and the birds came back in time to say goodbye to Beth, who, like a tired but trustful child, clung to the hands that had led her all her life, as Father and Mother guided her tenderly through the Valley of the Shadow, and gave her up to God.