you, Dora?"

Dora said it didn't matter; Alice might. So Alice read it, and though
she gabbled a bit we all heard it. I copied it afterwards. This is what
she read:

"NEW SOCIETY FOR BEING GOOD IN

"I, Dora Bastable, and Alice Bastable, my sister, being of sound mind
and body, when we were shut up with bread and water on that jungle day,
we thought a great deal about our naughty sins, and we made our minds up
to be good forever after. And we talked to Daisy about it, and she had
an idea. So we want to start a society for being good in. It is Daisy's
idea, but we think so too."

"You know," Dora interrupted, "when people want to do good things they
always make a society. There are thousands--there's the Missionary
Society."

"Yes," Alice said, "and the Society for the Prevention of something or
other, and the Young Men's Mutual Improvement Society, and the S. P. G."

"What's S. P. G.?" Oswald asked.

"Society for the Propagation of the Jews, of course," said Noel, who
cannot always spell.

"No, it isn't; but do let me go on."

Alice did go on.

"We propose to get up a society, with a chairman and a treasurer and
secretary, and keep a journal-book saying what we've done. If that
doesn't make us good it won't be my fault.

"The aim of the society is nobleness and goodness, and great and
unselfish deeds. We wish not to be such a nuisance to grown-up people,
and to perform prodigies of real goodness. We wish to spread our
wings"--here Alice read very fast. She told me afterwards Daisy had
helped her with that part, and she thought when she came to the wings
they sounded rather silly--"to spread our wings and rise above the kind
of interesting things that you ought not to do, but to do kindnesses to
all, however low and mean."

Denny was listening carefully. Now he nodded three or four times.

"Little words of kindness" (he said),
"Little deeds of love,
Make this earth an eagle
Like the one above."

This did not sound right, but we let it pass, because an eagle _does_
have wings, and we wanted to hear the rest of what the girls had
written. But there was no rest.

"That's all," said Alice, and Daisy said:

"Don't you think it's a good idea?"

"That depends," Oswald answered, "who is president, and what you mean by
being good." Oswald did not care very much for the idea himself,
because being good is not the sort of thing he thinks it is proper to
talk about, especially before s