“Terrible unseasonable. Hard to know what to do about your winter flannels.”
“I changed mine today,” I replied.
Her brown eyes again became serene pools.
“Guess I will, too,” she answered.
In Boston it would have taken two generations to have reached the subject of winter-flannels. We exchanged no further courtesies, except smiles, and she left looking cooler already.
At a little ranch near Pine, Arizona, northwest of Roosevelt Dam, we hoped to find lodging. Hoped, because a letter from Chandler took a week or more to penetrate to its remoteness, and ours had not long preceded us. Some discussion there had been as to whether the snow would permit us to get through, but we decided to chance it, for spring was daily working in our favor.
We had not gone far from town when the “old lady” without any preliminary groans, stopped short. Cars have a way of doing that, but ours till now had stopped only for external reasons, such as a tire, or a too persuasive mud-hole. Now she stopped as though she needed a rest and intended, willy-nilly, to take one. On such occasions I always open the hood and peer inside, not because it enlightens me or starts the car, but because Toby has not yet learned to regard it as a graceful gesture, merely.
“What is it?” she asked, with the respect I liked to have her employ.
“Either the carburetor or the batteries,” I answered expertly.
A man drove by. Our silent motor, and ourselves in the despairing, bewildered attitude common to all in like situation, were the only signal needed, for this was Arizona. A moment before he had seemed in a tearing hurry, but as he pulled up and offered help, he seemed to have all the time in the calendar. He got down in the dust, wrestled with the tools we intelligently handed him at proper intervals, explored the batteries, and struggled to his feet.