Busy Mrs. Corwin and her busy Chinaman might be heard
indeed, in the penetralia, pounding dough or rattling dishes; or
perhaps Rufe had called up some of the sleepers for a game of
croquet, and the hollow strokes of the mallet sounded far away
among the woods: but with these exceptions, it was sleep and
sunshine and dust, and the wind in the pine trees, all day long.
A little before stage time, that castle of indolence awoke. The
ostler threw his straw away and set to his preparations. Mr.
Jennings rubbed his eyes; happy Mr. Jennings, the something he had
been waiting for all day about to happen at last! The boarders
gathered in the verandah, silently giving ear, and gazing down the
road with shaded eyes. And as yet there was no sign for the
senses, not a sound, not a tremor of the mountain road. The birds,
to whom the secret of the hooting cuckoo is unknown, must have set
down to instinct this premonitory bustle.
And then the first of the two stages swooped upon the Toll House
with a roar and in a cloud of dust; and the shock had not yet time
to subside, before the second was abreast of it. Huge concerns
they were, well-horsed and loaded, the men in their shirt-sleeves,
the women swathed in veils, the long whip cracking like a pistol;
and as they charged upon that slumbering hostelry, each shepherding
a dust storm, the dead place blossomed into life and talk and
clatter.
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