men had been
digging for drains.

And then never seeing those three, day after day, and having to do
without them ever since!

But Margery remembers a good deal more (she is three years older than
I am). She remembers things people said, and the funeral sermon, and
the books being moved into the attic, and she remembers Grandmamma's
quarrel with Dr. Brown.

She says she was sitting behind the parlor curtains with Mrs.
Trimmer's Roman History, and Grandmamma was sitting, looking very
grave in her new black dress, with a pocket handkerchief and book in
her lap, and sherry and sponge biscuits on a tray on the piano, for
visitors of condolence, when Dr. Brown came in, looking very grave
too, and took off one of his black gloves and shook hands. Then he
took off the other, and put them both into his hat, and had a glass
of sherry and a sponge biscuit, so Margery knew that he was a visitor
of condolence.

Then he and Grandmamma talked a long time. Margery does not know what
about, for she was reading Mrs. Trimmer; but she thinks they were
getting rather cross with each other. Then they got up, and Dr. Brown
looked into his hat, and took out his gloves, and Grandmamma wiped her
eyes with her pocket handkerchief, and said "I hope I know how to
submit, but it has been a heavy judgment, Dr. Brown."

And Margery was just beginning to cry too, when Dr. Brown said, "A
very heavy judgment indeed, madam, for letting the cesspool leak into
the well;" and it puzzled her so much that she stopped.

Then Grandmamma was very angry, and Dr. Brown was angry too, and then
Grandmamma said, "I don't know another respectable practitioner, Dr.
Brown, who would have said what you have said this morning."

And Dr. Brown brushed his hat the wrong way with his coat sleeve, and
said, "Too true, madam! We are not a body of reformers, with all our
opportunities; we're as bigoted as most priesthoods, but we count
fewer missionary martyrs. The sins, the negligences, and the
ignorances of every age have gone on much the same as far as we have
been concerned, though very few people keep family chaplains, and
most folk have a family doctor."

Then Grandmamma got very stiff, Margery says (she always is rather
stiff), and said, "I am sorry, Dr. Brown, to hear you speak so ill of
the members of an honorable profession, to which you yourself belong."

And Dr. Brown found out that he had brushed his hat the wrong way, and
he brushed it right, and said,