"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. "Don't rightly know. Maybe soon. Maybe not so soon." For a moment Jeff was silent and Dan was still stuffing gingerbread into his mouth. Granny had spoken of trouble when Ike came, but apparently it was not trouble for herself, and if she wanted him to know more about it she would have told him. He wished he could offer her help, but he had an uncomfortable feeling that she knew how to help herself. He was trying to think of a way to steer the conversation away from Ike when Granny relieved him of the necessity for so doing. "What you peddlin'?" she asked brightly. Jeff fidgeted. The contents of his pack, for the most part, were designed for those who had little. Jeff tried to please people who yearned after a bit of gay ribbon, a new knife, anything they might need or desire but could not get for themselves. But he couldn't imagine what Granny lacked and countered her question with one of his own. "Where do you get your thread and yarn?" She looked surprised. "Spin it myself, to be sure. I have sheep. I grow flax, too." Jeff followed up because he was interested. "Do you also make your own dyes?" "Land, yes! 'Twould be a sin to let the yarbs go to waste when they grow right at the door step!" "Do you use anything besides herbs?" "Bark, seeds, nut husks and shells, it's all here. Take a bit of this, a bit of that, a bit of another thing, seethe it, and there's a dye." "I know you do your own weaving." "Land, yes!"