d 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--

'I don't know what to do--oo--oo--oo!
I don't know what to do--oo--oo!
It IS a beastly rainy day
And I don't know what to do.'

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