Oswald owns he was surprised. We put it to the vote at once, so as not
to let Denny cool. H. O. and Noel and Alice voted with us, so Daisy and
Dora were what is called a hopeless minority. We tried to cheer their
hopelessness by letting them read the things out of the Golden Deed book
aloud. Noel hid his face in the straw so that we should not see the
faces he made while he made poetry instead of listening, and when the
Wouldbegoods was by vote dissolved forever he sat up, with straws in his
hair, and said:

"THE EPITAPH

"The Wouldbegoods are dead and gone,
But not the golden deeds they have done.
These will remain upon Glory's page
To be an example to every age,
And by this we have got to know
How to be good upon our ow--N.

N is for Noel, that makes the rhyme and the sense both right. O.W.N.,
own; do you see?"

We saw it, and said so, and the gentle poet was satisfied. And the
council broke up. Oswald felt that a weight had been lifted from his
expanding chest, and it is curious that he never felt so inclined to be
good and a model youth as he did then.

As we went down the ladder out of the loft he said:

"There's one thing we ought to do, though, before we go home. We ought
to find Albert's uncle's long-lost grandmother for him."

Alice's heart beat true and steadfast. She said: "That's just exactly
what Noel and I were saying this morning. Look out, Oswald, you wretch,
you're kicking chaff into my eyes." She was going down the ladder just
under me.

Oswald's young sister's thoughtful remark ended in another council. But
not in the straw loft. We decided to have a quite new place, and
disregarded H. O.'s idea of the dairy and Noel's of the cellars. We had
the new council on the secret staircase, and there we settled exactly
what we ought to do. This is the same thing, if you really wish to be
good, as what you are going to do. It was a very interesting council,
and when it was over Oswald was so pleased to think that the
Wouldbegoods was unrecoverishly dead that he gave Denny and Noel, who
were sitting on the step below him, a good-humored, playful, gentle,
loving, brotherly shove, and said, "Get along down, it's tea-time!"

No reader who understands justice and the real rightness of things, and
who is to blame for what, will ever think it could have been Oswald's
fault that the two other boys got along down by rolling over and over
each other, and bursting the door at the