The Wouldbegoods: Being the Further Adventures of the Treasure Seekers by E. Nesbit (top rated ebook readers .txt) 📕

The author of these few lines really does hope to goodness that no one will be such an owl as to think from the number of things we did when we were in the country, that we were wretched, neglected little children, whose grown-up relations sparkled in the bright haunts of pleasure, and whirled in the giddy what’s-its-name of fashion, while we were left to weep forsaken at home. It was nothing of the kind, and I wish you to know that my father was with us a good deal—and Albert’s uncle (who is really no uncle of ours, but only of Albert next door when we lived in Lewisham) gave up a good many of his valuable hours to us. And the father of Denny and Daisy came now and then, and other people, quite as many as we wished to see. And we had some very decent times with them; and enjoyed ourselves very much indeed, thank you. In some ways the good times you have with grown-ups are better than the ones you have by yourselves. At any rate they are safer. It is almost impossible, then, to do anything fatal without being pulled up short by a grown-up ere yet the deed is done. And, if you are careful, anything that goes wrong can be looked on as the grown-up’s fault. But these secure pleasures are not so interesting to tell about as the things you do when there is no one to stop you on the edge of the rash act.

It is curious, too, that many of our most interesting games happened when grown-ups were far away. For instance when we were pilgrims.

It was just after the business of the Benevolent Bar, and it was a wet day. It is not 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—

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 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 shan’t ever fill the book with golden ones.’

H. O. had rolled himself in the red tablecloth 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’ Dick said.

‘It’s very curious,’ Denny said, ‘but you don’t seem to be able to be certain inside yourself whether what you’re doing is right if you happen to like doing it, but if you don’t like doing it you know quite well. I only thought of that just now. I wish Noel would make a poem about it.’

‘I am,’ Noel said; ‘it began about a crocodile but it is finishing itself up quite different from what I meant it to at first. Just wait a minute.’