One of the screws was loose, and I picked her out easy enough. The second one I broke the point off of my knife blade on. Like you nearly always do on a screw. When it snapped Colonel Tom he says:
"What's that?" He was powerful quick of hearing, Colonel Tom was. I laid low till they went on talking agin. Then Martha slides out on tiptoe and comes back in three seconds with one of these here little screw-drivers they use around sewing-machines and the little oil can that goes with it. I oils them screws and has them out in a holy minute, and lifts the grating from the floor careful and lays it careful on the rug.
By doing all of which I could get my head and shoulders down into that there hole. And by twisting my neck a good deal, see a little ways to each side into the room, instead of jest underneath the grating. 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 temporary, 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."