Who's sorry now? by Jill Churchill Read Free Book Online

the stump out of its hole with the chain and the truck. Dr. Toller looked over the bottom of the ball of roots and said, ”There don’t seem to be any bones attached to this one. But just put it aside. I want to look more carefully at it later.”
    He stared into the hole, obviously anxious to see what they’d find under the dirt. But he doggedly went back to unearthing the skull.
    Harry thought this was interesting, but even he was becoming a bit annoyed at how long it was taking. He’d expected to be finished with this easy job in one morning and then get back to other higher-paying jobs. They had two people right now waiting for Harry and Jim—one with a sagging, dangerous porch, and another customer with a leaking roof.
    When Emmaline Prinney arrived, flushed with victory, the bake sale having made a record amount of money, she was slightly alarmed by all the people in front of Grace and Favor, most of them looking at two holes. One of the two people she didn’t recognize was on his stomach doing something in the hole.
    As she watched, he pulled up a big ball of dirt, washed it off in a bucket, and brought out a dirty skull.
    She joined the group and touched Lily’s arm. ”What in the world is going on here?”
    ”The Harbinger boys pulled up a stump of a bush yesterday, and there was a skeletal hand sticking out of the roots. Didn’t anyone tell you?”
    ”No. I guess I was in the kitchen baking all day. Why didn’t anyone mention it over dinner?”
    ”I don’t know,” Lily apologized. ”I guess we were all just too hungry to mention it.”
    ”I’ll need to go back to town to get things to make late-afternoon sandwiches for this crowd,” Mrs. Prinney said, not sounding the least put out. She always loved to feed a crowd.
    Dr. Toller was happily examining the skull. ”No damage. He or she wasn’t struck on the head.” Then he started carefully removing the rib cage and the upper part of the spine. Washing them off, setting them down in order on a paper bag. He said to Lily, ”They have to dry before I can number them for bagging.”
    Lily was once again struck by how very cheerful he was about this. But the day was turning dark and a cold breeze had sprung up so she went inside for a while. Watching a rib cage dry wasn’t really all that interesting.
    Mrs. Prinney wasn’t the only resident of Grace and Favor who had an obsession. Hers was cooking, but Mimi’s great love was cleaning. Even as a child of seven, her late mother had cleaned for Mr. Horatio’s aunt Flora and sometimes let Mimi come along. When Flora Brewster died, and left the house to Mr. Horatio, he kept Mimi and her mother on. After Horatio died, Mimi’s mother had passed on, and the new Brewster brother and sister moved in. By then, she’d loved cleaning. She’d cover most of her curly platinum blond hair in a bright kerchief and she always wore an apron when she worked.
    When Mrs. Prinney asked Mimi to tidy up the big room at the far end of the second floor for the pathologist and the anthropologist, she added, ”Then take away their clothes and brush them out. They’re both muddy and may not have brought along a change of attire.”
    Naturally Mimi didn’t need to clean the rooms. She dusted and shook out the rugs almost every day anyway. And she couldn’t clean their clothes until they changed what they were wearing.
    Mrs. Prinney naturally provided the late-afternoon snack and invited the two strangers to join them for dinner and stay the night.
    ”Harry and Jim,” she added, ”you two are welcome to stay for dinner as well.”
    ”Thank you, Mrs. Prinney, but Mom has planned a roast for dinner,” Harry said.
    ”Thank you, too,” his brother Jim whispered when they were alone for a few minutes. ”I’m sick of this job and these scientific fellows.”
    ”I think it’s interesting. But I don’t want to be roped into more work today. Nor tomorrow for that matter. We have other jobs we promised to do and they