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A few days after Dora was laid up, Alice called a council of the Wouldbegoods, and Oswald and Dicky attended with darkly-clouded brows. Alice had the minute-book, which was an exercise-book that had not much written in it. She had begun at the other end. I hate doing that myself, because there is so little room at the top compared with right way up.
We hope to do better next time." Then came Noel's poem: 'We are the Wouldbegoods Society, We are not good yet, but we mean to try, And if we try, and if we don't succeed, It must mean we are very bad indeed. This sounded 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.
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.
Now the finding of the long-lost was the very last thing we did for the sake of its being a noble act, so that is the end of the Wouldbegoods, and there are no more chapters after this. But Oswald hates books that finish up without telling you the things you might want to know about the people in the book. So here goes. We went home to the beautiful Blackheath house.
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 for ever he sat up, straws in his hair, and said
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.
'Or the Society for Being Good In, said Daisy. 'Or the Society of Goods, said Noel. 'That's priggish, said Oswald; 'besides, we don't know whether we shall be so very. 'You see, Alice explained, 'we only said if we COULD we would be good. 'Well, then, Dicky said, getting up and beginning to dust the chopped hay off himself, 'call it the Society of the Wouldbegoods and have done with it.
Dora and a sofa had been carried out on to the lawn, and we were on the grass. It was very hot and dry. We had sherbet. Alice read: "Society of the Wouldbegoods. "We have not done much. Dicky mended a window, and we got the milk-pan out of the moat that dropped through where he mended it. Dora, Oswald, Dicky and me got upset in the moat. This was not goodness. Dora's foot was hurt.
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-humoured, playful, gentle, loving, brotherly shove, and said, 'Get along down, it's tea-time!
We had given that name to the minute-book of that beastly 'Society of the Wouldbegoods'. Then you could think of the book if you wanted to without remembering the Society. I always tried to forget both of them. Oswald said, 'But how? YOU don't know how. And if you did we haven't got a crowbar. I cannot help telling you that locks are opened with crowbars.
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