ounded so much righter than Noel's poetry generally does, that
Oswald said so, and Noel 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,' Noel said.

Then Oswald proposed that anybody should be allowed to write in the
book if they found out anything good that anyone else had done, but not
things that were public acts; and nobody was to write about themselves,
or anything other people told them, only what they found out.

After a brief jaw the others agreed, and Oswald felt, not for the first
time in his young life, that he would have made a good diplomatic hero
to carry despatches and outwit the other side. For now he had put it
out of the minute-book's power to be the kind of thing readers of
Ministering Children would have wished.

'And if anyone tells other people any good thing he's done he is to go
to Coventry for the rest of the day.'

And Denny remarked, 'We shall do good by stealth, and blush to find it
shame.'

After that nothing was written in the book for some time. I looked
about, and so did the others, but I never caught anyone in the act of
doing anything extra; though several of the others have told me since of
things they did at this time, and really wondered nobody had noticed.

I think I said before that when you tell a story you cannot tell
everything. It would be silly to do it. Because ordinary kinds of play
are dull to read about; and the only other thing is meals, and to dwell
on what you eat is greedy and not like a hero at all. A hero is always
contented with a venison pasty and a horn of sack. All the same, the
meals were very interesting; with things you do not get at home--Lent
pies with custard and currants in them, sausage rolls and fiede cakes,
and raisin cakes and apple turnovers, and honeycomb and syllabubs,
besides as much new milk as you cared about, and cream now and then,
and cheese always on the table for tea. Father told Mrs Pettigrew to get
what meals she liked, and she got these strange but attractive foods.

In a story about Wouldbegoods it is not proper to tell of times when
only some of us were naughty, so I will pass lightly over the time when
Noel got up the kitchen chimney and brought three bricks and an old
starling's nest and about a ton of soot down with him when he fell. They
never use the big chimney in the summer, but cook in the wash-house. Nor
do I wish to dwell on