pleasure slip by, while they said mournfully that
everything would have been so different if Mary's father had lived.
Betty Leicester was taught to do the things that ought to be done.

The Sin Book Club continued to be a profound secret, and was considered
of great value. Some days passed without a second meeting of the
members for reports, but they gave each other significant looks and
tried very hard to gain the little crosses that were to mark a good day.
Betty was in despair when evening after evening she had to put down a
cipher, and it was a great humiliation to find how often she yielded to
a temptation to say funny things about people. To be sure old Mrs. Max
was an ugly old gossip, but Betty need not have confided this opinion to
Serena and Letty as they happened to look out of the kitchen windows, to
see Mrs. Max go by. Betty had succeeded in being blameless until past
six o'clock that day, and it was the fifth day of trial; lost now, and
black-marked like those that had gone before. She went back to the
garden and sat down in the summer-house much dejected. The light that
came through the grape and clematis leaves was dim and tinted with
green; it was a little damp there too, and quite like a sorrowful little
hermitage. It is very hard work trying to cure a fault. Betty did so
like to make people laugh, and she was always seeing what funny things
people looked like; and altogether life was much soberer if one could no
longer say whatever came into one's head. She was sure that all funny
personalities did not make people think the less of their fellows, but
it seemed as if most, and the very funniest, did. Our friend dreaded the
inspection of her sin book, but when the Grants and Lizzie French showed
theirs too in solemn conclave there was only one good mark for the whole
four. This was Ellen Grant's, who talked much less than either of the
others and so may have found that silence cost less effort.

"Even if we never succeed it will make us more careful," Lizzie French
said, trying to keep up good courage.

"I keep wishing that Mary Beck belonged;" urged Betty loyally, but the
others were resolute and insisted, nobody could tell exactly why, that
Becky would spoil it all.

Betty was valiant enough in case of open war, but she hated heartily--as
who does not hate?--a chilling atmosphere of disapproval, in which no
good-fellowship can flourish. Of course the club soon betrayed its
common interest, and beca