The young man answered by ringing the bell, and when the waiter appeared he gave the requisite order. Gloria went in her chamber to put on her sack and hat. The carriage was soon announced, and in five minutes afterwards the young pair were rolling along the avenue, Gloria looking out from the window to watch for the signs of the shops she wished to visit. Presently she stopped the carriage before the door of the only general dealer and outfitter in ladies’ ready-made garments that the city then afforded. David Lindsay left her there and went to book their places in the Winchester stage-coach. It took Gloria three full hours to drive from place to place and collect all she wanted. She found them all without leaving the avenue, however. She had the trunk put on behind the carriage and the goods all piled within it, to save time by taking them to the hotel herself. Finally she reached her rooms at about five o’clock and spent half an hour in diligent packing. David Lindsay then came to take her down to dinner, which they had scarcely finished before the stage-coach called to claim them. In those slow days stage-coaches did not start exactly on time, as railway trains are supposed to do now. I have known a stage-coach to wait twenty minutes while John C. Calhoun and Henry Clay leisurely finished their breakfast before taking their seats to leave Washington at the end of a session of Congress. Our young pair did not keep the coach waiting. They soon had their luggage brought down and bestowed in the boot, and soon after found themselves comfortably seated, the only passengers except two returning country dealers who had been East to purchase goods for the spring trade. This class indeed formed the bulk of travelers at this season of the year. It was dark when the coach started on its long and wearisome journey. There was neither moon nor stars out, for the sky was quite overclouded, so that there was no temptation for the passengers to gaze abroad as the stage-coach rattled over the newly macadamized avenue on through Washington, Georgetown, Tennalleytown to Rockville, where it changed horses, and where one of the travelers left them and another one took his place. When the coach started again, Gloria curled herself up in her corner and tried to go to sleep, for she was in no way interested in the conversation concerning the dullness of the trade and the unpunctuality of debtors which the country merchants had forced upon her companion. Rocked, or fatigued, by the rolling of the cumbersome old coach, Gloria was soon fast asleep, and she slept through the whole night, undisturbed except by the stoppage at the post-houses to change horses. At sunrise they reached Leesburg, where they stopped to breakfast and to change coaches, taking the Winchester coach. They rode all day through the most beautiful passes of the lesser Blue Ridge and reached Winchester in the Valley in time for an early tea.