Our Secret society has just had a splendid picnic in Candace Milliken's
barn.
Our name is the B.O.S.S., and not a single boy in the village has been
able to guess it. It means Braid Over Shoulder Society, and that is the
sign. All the members wear one of their braids over the right shoulder
in front; the president's tied with red ribbon (I am the president) and
all the rest tied with blue.
To attract the attention of another member when in company or at a
public place we take the braid between the thumb and little finger and
stand carelessly on one leg. This is the Secret Signal and the password
is Sobb (B.O.S.S. spelled backwards) which was my idea and is thought
rather uncommon.
One of the rules of the B.O.S.S. is that any member may be required to
tell her besetting sin at any meeting, if asked to do so by a majority
of the members.
This was Candace Milliken's idea and much opposed by everybody, but when
it came to a vote so many of the girls were afraid of offending Candace
that they agreed because there was nobody else's father and mother
who would let us picnic in their barn and use their plow, harrow,
grindstone, sleigh, carryall, pung, sled, and wheelbarrow, which we did
and injured hardly anything.
They asked me to tell my besetting sin at the very first meeting, and it
nearly killed me to do it because it is such a common greedy one. It is
that I can't bear to call the other girls when I have found a thick spot
when we are out berrying in the summer time.
After I confessed, which made me dreadfully ashamed, every one of the
girls seemed surprised and said they had never noticed that one but had
each thought of something very different that I would be sure to think
was my besetting sin. Then Emma Jane said that rather than tell hers she
would resign from the Society and miss the picnic. So it made so
much trouble that Candace gave up. We struck out the rule from the
constitution and I had told my sin for nothing.
The reason we named ourselves the B.O.S.S. is that Minnie Smellie has
had her head shaved after scarlet fever and has no braid, so she can't
be a member.
I don't want her for a member but I can't be happy thinking she will
feel slighted, and it takes away half the pleasure of belonging to the
Society myself and being president.
That, I think, is the principal trouble about doing mean and unkind
things; that you can't do wrong and feel right, or be bad and feel good.
If you only could you could do anything that came into your mind yet
always be happy.
Minnie Smellie spoils everything she comes into but I suppose we
other girls must either have our hair shaved and call ourselves The
Baldheadians or let her be some kind of a special officer in the
B.O.S.S.
She might be the B.I.T.U.D. member (Braid in the Upper Drawer), for
there is where Mrs. Smellie keeps it now that it is cut off.