Page:The Wouldbegoods.djvu/46

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THE WOULDBEGOODS

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

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