The doctor I couldn't see yet, and only a
little of Colonel Tom, but Miss Lucy quite plain.
"You mean thing," Martha whispers, "you are
blocking it up so I can't hear."
"Keep still," I whispers, pulling my head out of
the hole so the sound wouldn't float downward into
the room below. "You are jest like all other
women--you got too much curiosity."
"How about yourself?" says she.
"Who was it thought of taking the grating off?"
I whispers back to her. Which settles her tem-
porary, but she says if I don't give her a chancet at
it purty soon she will tickle my ribs.
When I listens agin they are burying that there
Prent McMakin. But without any flowers.
Miss Lucy, she was half setting on, half leaning
against, the arm of a chair. Which her head was
jest a bit bowed down so that I couldn't see her
eyes. But they was the beginnings of a smile onto
her face. It was both soft and sad.
"Well," says Colonel Tom, "you two have wasted
almost twenty years of life."
"There is one good thing," says the doctor. "It
is a good thing that there was no child to suffer by
our mistakes."
She raised her face when he said that, Miss Lucy
did, and looked in his direction.
"You call that a good thing?" she says, in a kind
of wonder. And after a minute she sighs.
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