She turned those too sharp eyes on me discomfortingly. "Ah," she said, "so soon?"
"Well," I began, "it certainly acted quickly ..."
I stopped when I saw she wasnt hearing me. She sat down in the only empty chair and drummed her fingers against big white teeth. "Even under a microscope," she muttered, "no perceptible reaction for fortyeight hours. Laboratory conditions? Or my own idiocy? But I approximated ..." Her voice trailed off and for a full minute the absolute silence of the kitchen was broken only by the melodramatic dripping of a tap.
She made an effort to pull herself together and addressed me in her old abrupt way. "Corn or wheat?"
"Ay?"
"You said youve seen what it does. I asked you if you had applied it to corn or wheat—or what?"
She was looking at me so fixedly I had a slight difficulty in putting my words in good order. "It was neither, mam. I applied some of the stuff to a lawn—"
"A lawn, Weener?"
"Y-yes, mam."
"But I said—"