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.)