Thus far everything went swimmingly.  The dresses fitted admirably, and nothing could exceed the care with which they had been packed.  Her mother no longer bothered her about Hugh.  Lulu was quite well posted with regard to her duty.

Thus it was in the best of humors, that ’Lina tripped from Spring Bank door one pleasant July morning, and was driven with her mother and Lulu to Lexington, where they intended taking the evening train for Cincinnati.

CHAPTER XV

SARATOGA

“Mrs. Worthington, daughter, and colored servant, Spring Bank, Kentucky.”

“Dr. John Richards and mother, New York City.”

“Irving Stanley, Esq., Baltimore.”

These were the last entries the flaxen-haired clerk at Union Hall had made, feeling sure, as he made them, that each one had been first to the United States, and failing to find accommodations there, had come down to Union Hall.

The Union was so crowded that for the newcomers no rooms were found except the small, uncomfortable ones far up in the fourth story of the Ainsworth block, and thither, in not the most amiable mood, ’Lina followed her trunks, and was followed in turn by her mother and Lulu, the crowd whom they passed deciphering the name upon the trunks and whispering to each other:  “From Spring Bank, Kentucky.  Haughty-looking girl, wasn’t she?”

From his little twelve by ten apartment, where the summer sun was pouring in a perfect blaze of heat, Dr. Richards saw them pass, and after wondering who they were, and hoping they would be comfortable in their pen, gave them no further thought, but sat jamming his penknife into the old worm-eaten table, and thinking savage thoughts against that capricious lady, Fortune, who had compelled him to come to Saratoga, where rich wives were supposed to be had for the asking.  In Dr. Richard’s vest pocket there lay at this very moment a delicate little note, the meaning of which was that Alice Johnson declined the honor of becoming his wife.  Now he was ready for the first chance that offered, provided that chance possessed a certain style, and was tolerably good-looking.

This, then, was Dr. Richards’ errand to Saratoga, and one cause of his disgust at being banished from the United States, where heiresses were usually to be found in such abundance.

From his pleasanter, airier apartment, on the other side of the narrow hall, Irving Stanley looked out through his golden glasses, pitying the poor ladies condemned to that slow roast.

How hot, and dusty, and cross ’Lina was, and what a look of dismay she cast around the room, with its two bedsteads, its bureau, its table, its washstand, and its dozen pegs for her two dozen dresses, to say nothing of her mother’s.