The three principal officers were thus elected at one fell swoop and with an entire absence of that red tape which commonly renders organization so tiresome, Candace Milliken suggesting that perhaps she'd better be vice-president, as Emma Jane Perkins was always so bashful. “We ought to have more members,” she reminded the other girls, “but if we had invited them the first day they'd have all wanted to be officers, especially Minnie Smellie, so it's just as well not to ask them till another time. Is Thirza Meserve too little to join?” “I can't think why anybody named Meserve should have called a baby Thirza,” said Rebecca, somewhat out of order, though the meeting was carried on with small recognition of parliamentary laws. “It always makes me want to say: Thirza Meserver Heaven preserve her! Thirza Meserver Do we deserve her? She's little, but she's sweet, and absolutely without guile. I think we ought to have her.” “Is 'guile' the same as guilt?” inquired Emma Jane Perkins. “Yes,” the president answered; “exactly the same, except one is written and the other spoken language.” (Rebecca was rather good at imbibing information, and a master hand at imparting it!) “Written language is for poems and graduations and occasions like this--kind of like a best Sunday-go-to-meeting dress that you wouldn't like to go blueberrying in for fear of getting it spotted.” “I'd just as lieves get 'guile' spotted as not,” affirmed the unimaginative Emma Jane. “I think it's an awful foolish word; but now we're all named and our officers elected, what do we do first? It's easy enough for Mary and Martha Burch; they just play at missionarying because their folks work at it, same as Living and I used to make believe be blacksmiths when we were little.” “It must be nicer missionarying in those foreign places,” said Persis, “because on 'Afric's shores and India's plains and other spots where Satan reigns' (that's father's favorite hymn) there's always a heathen bowing down to wood and stone. You can take away his idols if he'll let you and give him a bible and the beginning's all made. But who'll we begin on? Jethro Small?” “Oh, he's entirely too dirty, and foolish besides!” exclaimed Candace. “Why not Ethan Hunt? He swears dreadfully.” “He lives on nuts and is a hermit, and it's a mile to his camp through the thick woods; my mother'll never let me go there,” objected Alice. “There's Uncle Tut Judson.” “He's too old; he's most a hundred and deaf as a post,” complained Emma Jane. “Besides, his married daughter is a Sabbath-school teacher--why doesn't she teach him to behave? I can't think of anybody just right to start on!”