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.

'Little words of kindness' (he said),
'Little deeds of love,
Make this earth an eagle
Like the one above.'

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