Page:Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag, Volume 2.djvu/106

88 with a laugh, in which all joined after the first surprise was over.

"I told you it would "bewitch us," said Amanda; and then all took a farewell look, which lasted so long ,they had to rush hack to the hotel in moat unseemly haste.

"Now to fresh châteaux and churches new," sang Lavinia, as they rolled away on the fourth stage of their summer journey. A very short stage it was, and soon they were in an entirely new scene, for Amboise was a little, old-time village on the banks of the Loire, looking as if it had been asleep for a hundred years. The Lion d'Or was a quaint place, so like the inns described in French novels, that one kept expecting to see some of Dumas' heroes come dashing up, all boots, plumes, and pistols, with a love-letter for some court beauty in the castle on the hill beyond.

Queer galleries and stairs led up outside the house to the rooms above. The salle-à-manger was across a court, and every dish came from a kitchen round the corner. The garçon a beaming, ubiquitous creature, trotted perpetually, diving clown steps, darting into dark corners, or skipping up ladders, producing