The Wouldbegoods Read Online Free PDF

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 toperform 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:
     
    RULES
    1. Every member is to be as good as possible.
    2. There is to be no more jaw than necessary about being good. (Oswald and Dicky put that rule in.)
    3. No day must pass without our doing some kind action to a suffering fellow creature.
    4. We are to meet every day, or as often as we like.
    5. We are to do good to people we don’t like as often as we can.
    6. No one is to leave the Society without the consent of all the rest of us.
    7. The Society is to be kept a profound secret from all the world except us.
    8. The name of our Society is –
    And when we got as far as that we all began to talk at once. Dora wanted it called the Society for Humane Improvement; Denny said the Society for Reformed Outcast Children; but Dicky said, No, we really were not so bad as all that.
    Then H.O. said, ‘Call it the Good Society.’
    ‘Or the Society for Being Good In,’ said Daisy.
    ‘Or the Society of Goods,’ said Noel.
    ‘That’s priggish,’ said Oswald; ‘besides, we don’t know whether we shall be so very.’
    ‘You see,’ Alice explained, ‘we only said if we
could
we would be good.’
    ‘Well, then,’ Dicky said, getting up and beginning to dust the chopped hay off himself, ‘call it the Society of the Wouldbegoods and have done with it.’
    Oswald thinks Dicky was getting sick of it and wanted to make himself a little disagreeable. If so, he was doomed to disappointment. For everyone else clapped hands and called