THE WOULDBEGOODS
a council of the Wouldbegoods, and Oswald and Dicky attended with darkly clouded brows. Alice had the minute-book, which was an exercise-book that had not much written in it. She had begun at the other end. I hate doing that myself, because there is so little room at the top compared with right way up.
Dora and a sofa had been carried out on to the lawn, and we were on the grass. It was very hot and dry. We had sherbet. Alice read:
"'Society of the Wouldbegoods.
"'We have not done much. Dicky mended a window, and we got the milk-pan out of the moat that dropped through where he mended it. Dora, Oswald, Dicky and me got upset in the moat. This was not goodness. Dora's foot was hurt. We hope to do better next time.'"
Then came Noël's poem:
"'We are the Wouldbegoods Society,
We are not good yet, but we mean to try.
And if we try, and if we don't succeed,
It must mean we are very bad indeed.'"
This sounded so much righter than Noël's poetry generally does, that Oswald said so, and Noël explained that Denny had helped him.
"He seems to know the right length for lines of poetry. I suppose it comes of learning so much at school," Noël said.
Then Oswald proposed that anybody should be allowed to write in the book if they found out anything good that any one else had done, but not
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