Edith Nesbit - The Wouldbegoods

It is strange to think how ignorant you were in the past. We can hardly believe now that once we really did not know that it spoiled hay to mess about with it. Horses don't like to eat it afterwards. Always remember this.

When the head had explained a little more it went away, and we turned the handle of the chaff-cutting machine, and nobody got hurt, though the head had said we should cut our fingers off if we touched it.

And then we sat down on the floor, which is dirty with the nice clean dirt that is more than half chopped hay, and those there was room for hung their legs down out of the top door, and we looked down at the farmyard, which is very slushy when you get down into it, but most interesting.

Then Alice said:

"Now we're all here, and the boys are tired enough to sit still for a minute, I want to have a council."

We said, "What about?" And she said, "I'll tell you. H. O., don't wriggle so; sit on my frock if the straws tickle your legs."

You see he wears socks, and so he can never be quite as comfortable as any one else.

"Promise not to laugh," Alice said, getting very red, and looking at Dora, who got red too.

We did, and then she said: "Dora and I have talked this over, and Daisy too, and we have written it down because it is easier than saying it. Shall I read it? or will 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 Noël, 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.

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 strangers. But the girls and Denny seemed to like it, so Oswald did not say exactly what he thought, especially as it was Daisy's idea. This was true politeness.

"I think it would be nice," Noël said, "if we made it a sort of play. Let's do the 'Pilgrim's Progress.'"

We talked about that for some time, but it did not come to anything, because we all wanted to be Mr. Greatheart, except H. O., who wanted to be the lions, and you could not have lions in a Society for Goodness.

Dicky said he did not wish to play if it meant reading books about children who die; he really felt just as Oswald did about it, he told me afterwards. But the girls were looking as if they were in Sunday school, and we did not wish to be unkind.

At last Oswald said, "Well, let's draw up the rules of the society, and choose the president and settle the name."

Dora said Oswald should be president, and he modestly consented. She was secretary, and Denny treasurer if we ever had any money.

Making the rules took us all the afternoon. They were these:

Rules

1. Every member is to be as good as possible.

2. There is to be no more jaw than necessary about being good. (Oswald and Dicky put that rule in.)

3. No day must pass without our doing some kind action to a suffering fellow-creature.

4. We are to meet every day, or as often as we like.

5. We are to do good to people we don't like as often as we can.

6. No one is to leave the Society without the consent of all the rest of us.

7. The Society is to be kept a profound secret from all the world except us.

8. The name of our Society is —

And when we got as far as that we all began to talk at once. Dora wanted it called the Society for Humane Improvement; Denny said the Society for Reformed Outcast Children; but Dicky said, "No, we really were not so bad as all that." Then H. O. said, "Call it the Good Society."

"Or the Society for Being Good In," said Daisy.

"Or the Society of Goods," said Noël.

"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."

Oswald thinks Dicky was getting sick of it and wanted to make himself a little disagreeable. If so, he was doomed to disappointment. For every one else clapped hands and called out, "That's the very thing!" Then the girls went off to write out the rules, and took H. O. with them, and Noël went to write some poetry to put in the minute book. That's what you call the book that a society's secretary writes what it does in. Denny went with him to help. He knows a lot of poetry. I think he went to a lady's school where they taught nothing but that. He was rather shy of us, but he took to Noël. I can't think why. Dicky and Oswald walked round the garden and told each other what they thought of the new society.

"I'm not sure we oughtn't to have put our foot down at the beginning," Dicky said. "I don't see much in it, anyhow."

"It pleases the girls," Oswald said, for he is a kind brother.

"But we're not going to stand jaw, and 'words in season,' and 'loving sisterly warnings.' I tell you what it is, Oswald, we'll have to run this thing our way, or it'll be jolly beastly for everybody."

Oswald saw this plainly.

"We must do something," Dicky said; "it's very hard, though. Still, there must be some interesting things that are not wrong."

"I suppose so," Oswald said, "but being good is so much like being a muff, generally. Anyhow I'm not going to smooth the pillows of the sick, or read to the aged poor, or any rot out of Ministering Children ."

"No more am I," Dicky said. He was chewing a straw like the head had in its mouth, "but I suppose we must play the game fair. Let's begin by looking out for something useful to do – something like mending things or cleaning them, not just showing off."