Alice.

"Oh, so I am," remarked Dicky, trying to look surprised. "Well, my idea
is let's be a sort of Industrious Society of Beavers, and make a solemn
vow and covenant to make something every day. We might call it the
Would-be-Clevers."

"It would be the Too-clever-by-half's before we'd done with it," said
Oswald.

And Alice said, "We couldn't always make things that would be any good,
and then we should have to do something that wasn't any good, and that
would be rot. Yes, I know it's my turn--H.O., you'll kick the table to
pieces if you go on like that. Do, for goodness' sake, keep your feet
still. The only thing I can think of is a society called the
Would-be-Boys."

"With you and Dora for members."

"And Noel--poets aren't boys exactly," said H.O.

"If you don't shut up you shan't be in it at all," said Alice, putting
her arm round Noel. "No; I meant us all to be in it--only you boys are
not to keep saying we're only girls, and let us do everything the same
as you boys do."

"I don't want to be a boy, thank you," said Dora, "not when I see how
they behave. H.O., _do_ stop sniffing and use your handkerchief. Well,
take mine, then."

It was now Noel's turn to disclose his idea, which proved most awful.

"Let's be Would-be-Poets," he said, "and solemnly vow and convenient to
write one piece of poetry a day as long as we live."

Most of us were dumb at the dreadful thought. But Alice said--

"That would never do, Noel dear, because you're the only one of us who's
clever enough to do it."

So Noel's detestable and degrading idea was shelved without Oswald
having to say anything that would have made the youthful poet weep.

"I suppose you don't mean me to say what I thought of," said H.O., "but
I shall. I think you ought all to be in a Would-be-Kind Society, and vow
solemn convents and things not to be down on your younger brother."

We explained to him at once that _he_ couldn't be in that, because he
hadn't got a younger brother.

"And you may think yourself lucky you haven't," Dicky added.

The ingenious and felicitous Oswald was just going to begin about the
council all over again, when the portable form of our Indian uncle came
stoutly stumping down the garden path under the cedars.

"Hi, brigands!" he cried in his cheerful unclish manner. "Who's on for
the Hippodrome this bright day?"

And instantly we all were. Even Oswald--because after all you can have
a council any day, but Hippodromes ar