A mountain woman with three open-eyed, silent children came slowly to meet them.
She smiled pleasantly, and without embarrassment spoke in a pleasant drawl:
“Won't you 'light and look at your saddle?”
The expression caught Jim's fancy, and he broke into a roar of laughter. The woman blushed and laughed with him. She couldn't understand what was the matter with the man. Why should he explode over the simple greeting in which she had expressed her pleasure at their arrival?
Anyhow, she was an innkeeper's wife, and her business was to make folks feel at home—so she laughed again with Jim.
“You know that's the funniest invitation I ever got in a car,” he cried at last. “We fly in these things sometimes. And when you said, `Won't you 'light,'”—he paused and turned to his wife—“I could just feel myself up in the air on that big old racer's back.”
“Won't you-all stay all night with us?” the soft voice drawled again.
“Thank you, not tonight,” Mary answered.
She waited for Jim to ask the way.
“No—not tonight,” he repeated. “You happen to know an old woman by the name of Owens who lives up here?”