I wasn't sorry. This travelling all night is apt to take the ambition out of the most energetic character. The difference between pink silk and alpaca was nothing to me now.
Well, in an hour after, the carriage we rode in stopped under a great square roof, set on marble pillars, which spreads out from the steps of the White House to keep people sheltered from the storm and sun when they get out of the carriages. It was dark now, and two great street-lamps were in brilliant combustion each side of the steps.
Between us, sisters, that White House that we hear so much about is no great shakes of a building. Compared to the Capitol, it is just nowhere.
Cousin D. rang the knob, which was silver, and a man opened the door.
"We should like to see the House," says Cousin D.
"Certainly," says the man. "Walk in."
We did walk into a large room, with a few chairs and two or three pictures in it; nothing particular, I can tell you.
"This way," says the man.
We went that way, into a great room, long and wide as a meeting-house, choke full of long windows, and with three awful large glass balloons, blazing with lights, a-hanging from the roof.
The carpet was thick and soft as a sandy shore, and had its colors all trampled in together, as if some one had stamped down the leaves of a maple camp into the grass as they fell last year.