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.