I like good, strong words, that mean something.

The exchange comes in chapter 4 of Little Women, “Burdens”. On a bleak winter morning, Meg and Jo set off to work, Meg as a governess and Jo as companion to old Aunt March, with Hannah’s hot turnovers to warm their hands. Their mother waves from the window, and Jo, full of remorse for their bad moods, exclaims that “more ungrateful minxes than we are were never seen”. From the depths of her veil, Meg begs her not to use such dreadful expressions. Jo answers with this line; Meg retorts that she is “neither a rascal nor a minx”. Jo teases her into laughing, promising carriages and ice-cream once she has made her fortune.

Louisa May Alcott wrote the novel in 1868 at the suggestion of her publisher, who wanted a story for girls. She drew the four March sisters from her own family, and gave much of herself to Jo: outspoken, impatient with ladylike rules, and dreaming of becoming a writer.

Little Women, Part 1, chapter 4 (Jo), 1868

Checked word for word in the work itself.

Read the passage in the work