men, without hope of reward, and to those who
could make no return. For it rang in my ears that Godfather Gilpin had
said, "He has no friends--that is why he is being buried by the Brothers
of Pity."

I quite understood what I thought they must feel, because I had once
buried a cat who had no friends. It was a poor half-starved old thing,
for the people it belonged to had left it, and I used to see it slinking
up to the back door and looking at Tabby, who was very fat and sleek,
and at the scraps on the unwashed dishes after dinner. Mrs. Jones kicked
it out every time, and what happened to it before I found it lying
draggled and dead at the bottom of the Ha-ha, with the top of a kettle
still fastened to its scraggy tail, I never knew, and it cost me bitter
tears to guess. It cost me some hard work, too, to dig the grave, for my
spade was so very small.

I don't think Mrs. Jones would have cared to be a Brother of Pity, for
she was very angry with me for burying that cat, because it was such a
wretched one, and so thin and dirty, and looked so ugly and smelt so
nasty. But that was just why I wanted to give it a good funeral, and why
I picked my crimson lily and put it in the grave, because it seemed so
sad the poor thing should be like that when it might have been clean and
fluffy, and fat and comfortable, like Tabby, if it had had a home and
people to look after it.

It was remembering about the cat that made me think that there were no
Brothers of Pity (not even in Tuscany, for I asked Godfather Gilpin) to
bury beasts and birds and fishes when they have no friends to go to
their funerals. And that was how it was that I settled to be a Brother
of Pity without waiting till I grew up and could carry men.

I had a shilling of my own, and with sixpence of it I bought a yard and
a half of black calico at the post-office shop, and Mrs. Jones made me a
cloak out of it; and with the other sixpence I bought a mask--for they
sell toys there too. It was not a right sort of mask, but I could not
make Mrs. Jones understand about a hood with two eye-holes in it, and I
did not like to show her the picture, for if she had seen that I wanted
to play at burying people, perhaps she would not have made me the cloak.
She made it very well, and it came down to my ankles, and I could hide
my spade under it. The worst of the mask was that it was a funny one,
with a big nose; but it hid my face all the same, and when you get
inside a mask