The old woman sat spectator of the feast.
"There was a time when I could eat like that. It's over now a hundred years ago, but I mind it as though it were yesterday."
"Go on! you're not a hundred years old!"
"I'm a hundred and twenty-two next Tuesday week."
Bertie stared, holding a mouthful of steak suspended on his fork in the air. A hundred and twenty-two! What was his tale of years compared to that? Freddy winked at him.
"Yes, I daresay. You were a hundred and ninety-five yesterday, and sixty-two this morning. It's my belief you're about five and twenty."
"Five and twenty! I daresay I look it, but I ain't. I'm more than that. I always did look a wild young thing."
Freddy roared; anything looking less like five and twenty, or a "wild young thing," could scarcely be conceived. The old woman went placidly on.
"I remember Jacky Sheppard, and Dicky Turpin, and Tommy King; they were all highwaymen in my young days."
"I suppose you were a highwayman's wife?"