The Wouldbegoods: Being the Further Adventures of the Treasure Seekers, E. Nesbit [red novels .TXT] 📗

went too, to see publishers. We saw them to the station, and Father gave us a long list of what we weren’t to do. It began with ‘Don’t pull ropes unless you’re quite sure what will happen at the other end,’ and it finished with ‘For goodness sake, try to keep out of mischief till I come down on Saturday’. There were lots of other things in between.

We all promised we would. And we saw them off and waved till the train was quite out of sight. Then we started to walk home. Daisy was tired so Oswald carried her home on his back. When we got home she said—

‘I do like you, Oswald.’

She is not a bad little kid; and Oswald felt it was his duty to be nice to her because she was a visitor. Then we looked all over everything. It was a glorious place. You did not know where to begin. We were all a little tired before we found the hayloft, but we pulled ourselves together to make a fort with the trusses of hay—great square things—and we were having a jolly good time, all of us, when suddenly a trap-door opened and a head bobbed up with a straw in its mouth. We knew nothing about the country then, and the head really did scare us rather, though, of course, we found out directly that the feet belonging to it were standing on the bar of the loose-box underneath. The head said—

‘Don’t you let the governor catch you a-spoiling of that there hay, that’s all.’ And it spoke thickly because of the straw.

It is strange to think how ignorant you were in the past. We can hardly believe now that once we really did not know that it spoiled hay to mess about with it. Horses don’t like to eat it afterwards.

Always remember this.

When the head had explained a little more it went away, and we turned the handle of the chaff-cutting machine, and nobody got hurt, though the head HAD said we should cut our fingers off if we touched it.

And then we sat down on the floor, which is dirty with the nice clean dirt that is more than half chopped hay, and those there was room for hung their legs down out of the top door, and we looked down at the farmyard, which is very slushy when you get down into it, but most interesting.

Then Alice said—

‘Now we’re all here, and the boys are tired enough to sit still for a minute, I want to have a council.’

We said what about? And she said, ‘I’ll tell you.’ H. O., don’t wriggle so; sit on my frock if the straws tickle your legs.’

You see he wears socks, and so he can never be quite as comfortable as anyone else.

‘Promise not to laugh’ Alice said, getting very red, and looking at Dora, who got red too.

We did, and then she said:

‘Dora and I have talked this over, and Daisy too, and we have written it down because it is easier than saying it. Shall I read it? or will you, Dora?’

Dora said it didn’t matter; Alice might. So Alice read it, and though she gabbled a bit we all heard it. I copied it afterwards. This is what she read:

NEW SOCIETY FOR BEING GOOD IN

‘I, Dora Bastable, and Alice Bastable, my sister, being of sound mind and body, when we were shut up with bread and water on that jungle day, we thought a great deal about our naughty sins, and we made our minds up to be good for ever after. And we talked to Daisy about it, and she had an idea. So we want to start a society for being good in. It is Daisy’s idea, but we think so too.’

‘You know,’ Dora interrupted, ‘when people want to do good things they always make a society. There are thousands—there’s the Missionary Society.’

‘Yes,’ Alice said, ‘and the Society for the Prevention of something or other, and the Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Society, and the S.P.G.’

‘What’s S.P.G.?’ Oswald asked.

‘Society for the Propagation of the Jews, of course,’ said Noel, who cannot always spell.

‘No, it isn’t; but do let me go on.’

Alice did go on.

‘We propose to get up a society, with a chairman and a treasurer and secretary, and keep a journal-book saying what we’ve done. If that doesn’t make us good it won’t be my fault.

‘The aim of the society is nobleness and goodness, and great and unselfish deeds. We wish not to be such a nuisance to grown-up people and to perform prodigies of real goodness. We wish to spread our wings’—here Alice read very fast. She told me afterwards Daisy had helped her with that part, and she thought when she came to the wings they sounded rather silly—‘to spread our wings and rise above the kind of interesting things that you ought not to do, but to do kindnesses to all, however low and mean.’

Denny was listening carefully. Now he nodded three or four times.

‘Little words of kindness’ (he said), ‘Little deeds of love, Make this earth an eagle Like the one above.’

This did not sound right, but we let it pass, because an eagle does have wings, and we wanted to hear the rest of what the girls had written. But there was no rest.

‘That’s all,’ said Alice, and Daisy said—‘Don’t you think it’s a good idea?’

‘That depends,’ Oswald answered, ‘who is president and what you mean by being good.’

Oswald did not care very much for the idea himself, because being good is not the sort of thing he thinks it is proper to talk about, especially before strangers. But the girls and Denny seemed to like it, so Oswald did not say exactly what he thought, especially as it was Daisy’s idea. This was true politeness.

‘I think it would be nice,’ Noel said, ‘if we made it a sort of play. Let’s do the Pilgrim’s Progress.’

We talked about that for some time, but it did not come to anything, because we all wanted to be Mr Greatheart, except H. O., who wanted to be the lions, and you could not have lions in a Society for Goodness.

Dicky said he did not wish to play if it meant reading books about children who die; he really felt just as Oswald did about it, he told me afterwards. But the girls were looking as if they were in Sunday school, and we did not wish to be unkind.

At last Oswald said, ‘Well, let’s draw up the rules of the society, and choose the president and settle the name.’

Dora said Oswald should be president, and he modestly consented. She was secretary, and Denny treasurer if we ever had any money.

Making the rules took us all the afternoon. They were these: