is not so easy to amuse yourself indoors on a wet day as older
people seem to think, especially when you are far removed from your own
home, and haven't got all your own books and things. The girls were
playing Halma--which is a beastly game--Noel was writing poetry, H. O.
was singing "I don't know what to do" to the tune of "Canaan's Happy
Shore." It goes like this, and is very tiresome to listen to:

"I don't know what to do--oo--oo--oo!
I don't know what to do--oo--oo!
It is a beastly rainy day
And I don't know what to do."

The rest of us were trying to make him shut up. We put a carpet-bag over
his head, but he went on inside it; and then we sat on him, but he sang
under us; we held him upside down and made him crawl head first under
the sofa, but when, even there, he kept it up, we saw that nothing short
of violence would induce him to silence, so we let him go. And then he
said we had hurt him, and we said we were only in fun, and he said if we
were he wasn't, and ill feeling might have grown up even out of a
playful brotherly act like ours had been, only Alice chucked the Halma
and said:

"Let dogs delight. Come on--let's play something."

Then Dora said, "Yes, but look here. Now we're all together, I do want
to say something. What about the Wouldbegoods Society?"

Many of us groaned, and one said, "Hear! hear!" I will not say which
one, but it was not Oswald.

"No, but really," Dora said, "I don't want to be preachy--but you know
we _did_ say we'd try to be good. And it says in a book I was reading
only yesterday that _not_ being naughty is not enough. You must _be_
good. And we've hardly done anything. The Golden Deed book's almost
empty."

"Couldn't we have a book of leaden deeds," said Noel, coming out of his
poetry, "then there'd be plenty for Alice to write about if she wants
to, or brass or zinc or aluminium deeds? We sha'n't ever fill the book
with golden ones."

H. O. had rolled himself in the red table-cloth, and said Noel was only
advising us to be naughty, and again peace waved in the balance. But
Alice said, "Oh, H. O., _don't_--he didn't mean that; but really and
truly, I wish wrong things weren't so interesting. You begin to do a
noble act, and then it gets so exciting, and before you know where you
are you are doing something wrong as hard as you can lick."

"And enjoying it too," Dicky said.

"It's very curious," Denny said, "but you don't seem to be able to be
cert