Gloria : $b A novelSouthworth, Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte
General
Gloria : $b A novel
Southworth, Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte
Maryland -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction; Women -- United States -- Fiction
Here again they were to change coaches and take the Staunton stage.
David Lindsay would have prevailed on Gloria to stop and rest till
morning, but she was determined to pursue her journey.
They had but an hour here before the starting of the Staunton coach, and
Gloria made the most of her time to refresh herself by a wash and
prepare comfortably for her second night’s ride.
After an excellent tea, for which their wintry day’s journey had given
them a keen appetite, the young travelers took their seats in the
Staunton coach and recommenced their journey.
And this second night, poor, disappointed David Lindsay slept as soundly
in his seat as did the willful beauty, Gloria, in hers.
Not even the stoppage of the coach to change horses, amid the flashing
lights of the roadside post-houses, or the getting off of old passengers
and climbing in of new ones succeeded in arousing them, for if disturbed
they would draw a long breath, slightly change position, and drop asleep
again.
They never opened their eyes until the stage-coach stopped at Woodstock,
when the tumultuous getting out of their fellow-passengers at once fully
awakened them.
Then they saw that the sun was at least an hour high, and that the
horses were being taken from the coach before a spacious hotel in the
principal street of a country town.
“What place is this?” drowsily inquired David Lindsay.
“Woodstock, sir, where we change horses and get breakfast,” answered the
guard.
David handed his sleepy companion from the inside of the heavy old
vehicle, and led her into a pleasant parlor, where their
fellow-travelers were already gathered around a large, open fireplace,
in which a glorious hickory wood fire was blazing. The party there made
room for the young lady.
But she did not stay with them long. A neat colored girl came up to her
and respectfully whispered the question as to whether she would not like
to go to her room before breakfast.
Decidedly Gloria would like to do that very thing. So she arose and
followed the girl, who lifted and carried the young lady’s traveling-bag
to a spacious chamber over the parlor, with white dimity window-curtains
and bed-spread, and a fine fire blazing up the open chimney-place.
The girl supplied the young traveler with warm and cold water, fresh
towels, and every other requisite for the toilet—informing her,
meantime, that she had half an hour before breakfast.
Gloria was glad. She sent for her trunk to be brought up, and had a
thoroughly refreshing toilet, with a full change of dress.
Then, as fresh as if she had risen from a comfortable bed, instead of
coming out of a lumbering stage-coach, she went down and joined her
fellow-travelers at a delicious breakfast of coffee, hot rolls,
buckwheat cakes, venison, quails, ham and every dainty of the season.
After the breakfast, half their fellow-passengers entered with them into
the Staunton coach. (The other half had diverged in various directions.)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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