Jeff said gently, "I think you've kept busy a long while around here."
"Sixty-four years the seventh of May," she said pertly. "Came as a sixteen-year-old bride. Enos, God rest his soul, has been gone these past three years. You two come on into the kitchen."
She led them into the kitchen, seated them, opened a trap door in the floor, took cool milk from an earth-bound chamber, and lifted a tray of gingerbread from a cabinet. Eighty years old, her movements were almost as brisk and sure as a girl's. Jeff and Dan ate heartily; any food they prepared for themselves could not possibly compare with this. Granny seated herself companionably near.
"Ike say when he was gettin' out?" she asked.
"Well, no. He was there with Bucky—" Jeff snapped his fingers. "I forgot his last name."
"Bucky Edwards," she furnished. "Land! He and Ike been stealin' chickens for a span of time."
Jeff sensed something completely fine. She was old in years only. Until the day she died her mind would be young and strong. Ike's escapades probably did hurt her, but Ike was as much her son as the doctor, the lawyer and the others who had decided in favor of respectable careers. She would not deny him.
Jeff said, "Ike and Bucky didn't seem to have any definite plans."
"They have some," she assured him. "They'll come here, and when they do, there'll be a heap of trouble—" She stopped suddenly, as though she had said something unwise.
"When do you expect them?" Jeff asked.