Brothers of Pity | Page 8

I gave them

leave, and I think I'll put a cross over him, because I don't think it's
untrue to show that he was buried by the Brothers of Pity."
Godfather Gilpin quite agreed with me, and we made a nice mound (for
I had brought my spade), and put the best kind of cross, and afterwards
I made a wreath of forget-me-nots to hang on it.
He was the only robin-redbreast I have found since I became a Brother
of Pity, and that was how it was that it was not I who buried him after
all.
Many of the walks that Nurse likes to take I do not care about, but one
place she likes to go to, especially on Sunday, I like too, and that is the
churchyard.
I was always fond of it. It is so very nice to read the tombstones, and
fancy what the people were like, particularly the ones who lived long
ago, in 1600 and something, with beautifully-shaped sixes and capital
letters on their graves. For they must have dressed quite differently
from us, and perhaps they knew Charles the First and Oliver Cromwell.
Diggory the gravedigger never talks much, but I like to watch him. I
think he is rather deaf, for when I asked him if he thought, if he went
on long enough, he could dig himself through to the other side of the
world, he only said "Hey?" and chucked up a great shovelful of earth.
But perhaps it was because he was so deep down that he could not hear.
Now, when he is quite out of sight, and chucks the earth up like that, it
makes me think of the sexton beetles; for Godfather Gilpin says they
drive their flat heads straight down, and then lift them with a sharp jerk,
and throw the earth up so.
I said to Diggory one day, "Don't you wish your head was flat, instead
of being as it is, so that you could shovel with it instead of having to
have a spade?"
He wasn't so deep down that time, and he heard me, and put his head
up out of the grave and rested on his spade. But he only scratched his

head and stared, and said, "You be an uncommon queer young
gentleman, to be sure," and then went on digging again. And I was
afraid he was angry, so I daren't ask him any more.
I daren't of course ask him if he is a Brother of Pity, but I think he
deserves to be, for workhouse burials at any rate; for if you have only
the Porter and Silly Billy at your funeral, I don't think you can call that
having friends.
I have taken the beetles for my brothers, of course. Godfather Gilpin
says I should find far more bodies than I do if they were not burying all
along. I often wish I could understand them when they hum, and that
they knew me.
I wonder if either they or Diggory know that they belong to the order of
Fratelli della Misericordia, and that I belong to it too?
But of course it would not be right to ask them, even if either of them
would answer me, for if we were "known, even to each other," we
should not really and truly be Brothers of Pity.
NOTE--Burying beetles are to the full as skilful as they are described in
this tale. With a due respect for the graces of art, I have not embodied
the fact that they feed on the carcases which they bury. The last thing
that the burying beetle does, after tidying the grave, is to make a small
hole and go down himself, having previously buried his partner with
their prey. Here the eggs are laid, and the larvæ hatched and fed.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote A: Necrophorus humator, &c.]

FATHER HEDGEHOG AND HIS NEIGHBOURS.
* * * * *
CHAPTER I.

The care of a large family is no light matter, as everybody knows. And
that year I had an unusually large family. No less than seven young
urchins for Mrs. Hedgehog and myself to take care of and start in life;
and there was not a prickly parent on this side of the brook, or within
three fields beyond, who had more than four.
My father's brother had six one year, I know. It was the summer that I
myself was born. I can remember hearing my father and mother talk
about it before I could see. As these six cousins were discussed in a
tone of interest and respect which seemed to bear somewhat
disparagingly on me and my brother and sisters (there were only four of
us), I was rather glad to learn that they also had been