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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 every one else clapped hands and called out, “That’s the very thing!” Then the girls went off to write out the rules, and took H. O. with them, and Noel went to write some poetry to put in the minute book. That’s what you call the book that a society’s secretary writes what it does in. Denny went with him to help. He knows a lot of poetry. I think he went to a lady’s school where they taught nothing but that. He was rather shy of us, but he took to Noel. I can’t think why. Dicky and Oswald walked round the garden and told each other what they thought of the new society.

“I’m not sure we oughtn’t to have put our foot down at the beginning,” Dicky said. “I don’t see much in it, anyhow.”

“It pleases the girls,” Oswald said, for he is a kind brother.

“But we’re not going to stand jaw, and ‘words in season,’ and ‘loving sisterly warnings.’ I tell you what it is, Oswald, we’ll have to run this thing our way, or it’ll be jolly beastly for everybody.”

Oswald saw this plainly.

“We must do something,” Dicky said; “it’s very hard, though. Still, there must be some interesting things that are not wrong.”

“I suppose so,” Oswald said, “but being good is so much like being a muff, generally. Anyhow I’m not going to smooth the pillows of the sick, or read to the aged poor, or any rot out of Ministering Children.”

“No more am I,” Dicky said. He was chewing a straw like the head had in its mouth, “but I suppose we must play the game fair. Let’s begin by looking out for something useful to do–something like mending things or cleaning them, not just showing off.”

“The boys in books chop kindling wood and save their pennies to buy tea and tracts.”

“Little beasts!” said Dick. “I say, let’s talk about something else.” And Oswald was glad to, for he was beginning to feel jolly uncomfortable.

We were all rather quiet at tea, and afterwards Oswald played draughts with Daisy and the others yawned. I don’t know when we’ve had such a gloomy evening. And every one was horribly polite, and said “Please” and “Thank you,” far more than requisite.

Albert’s uncle came home after tea. He was jolly, and told us stories, but he noticed us being a little dull, and asked what blight had fallen on our young lives. Oswald could have answered and said, “It is the Society of the Wouldbegoods that is the blight,” but of course he didn’t; and Albert’s uncle said no more, but he went up and kissed the girls when they were in bed, and asked them if there was anything wrong. And they told him no, on their honor.