xe and had a
blazing big bonfire, and cheered till we could hardly speak.

The postcard was a mistake; he was only missing. There was a pipe and
a whole pound of tobacco left over from our keepsake to the other
soldiers. We gave it to Bill. Father is going to have him for
under-gardener when his wounds get well. He'll always be a bit lame, so
he cannot fight any more.

CHAPTER 4. THE TOWER OF MYSTERY

It was very rough on Dora having her foot bad, but we took it in turns
to stay in with her, and she was very decent about it. Daisy was most
with her. I do not dislike Daisy, but I wish she had been taught how to
play. Because Dora is rather like that naturally, and sometimes I have
thought that Daisy makes her worse.

I talked to Albert's uncle about it one day, when the others had gone to
church, and I did not go because of ear-ache, and he said it came
from reading the wrong sort of books partly--she has read Ministering
Children, and Anna Ross, or The Orphan of Waterloo, and Ready Work for
Willing Hands, and Elsie, or Like a Little Candle, and even a horrid
little blue book about the something or other of Little Sins. After this
conversation Oswald took care she had plenty of the right sort of books
to read, and he was surprised and pleased when she got up early one
morning to finish Monte Cristo. Oswald felt that he was really being
useful to a suffering fellow-creature when he gave Daisy books that were
not all about being good.

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.

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. 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 s