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.
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