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.
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