The Storm Centre by Mary Noailles Murfree — Read

Downstairs in the hotel there had been the usual stir of the morning. Till a late hour the punkahs had swung back and forth above the long tables in the dining room, each furnished with one of those primitive contrivances for the banishment of flies. The swaying of the pendent fringes of paper rivalled the rustling of the trees in the quadrangle outside, on which the broad, long windows looked, as each punkah-cord was pulled by a specimen of the cheerful and alert pickaninny of that day, keenly interested in all that occurred. Others ran in and out of the kitchen, bearing to the waiters, to be dispensed among the guests, interminable relays of the waffles of those times, golden brown, delicately rich, soft, yet crisp, of a peculiar lightness, -- a kind that will be seen no more, despite the food inventions and dietetic improvements, for the artists of that choice cookery are all dead and their receipts only serve to mark the decadence of proficiency.

Strangers of all sorts, officers of the army, civilians from every quarter of the north, filled the public apartments, aimlessly chatting, discussing the news from the front, smoking matutinal cigars, buying papers from the omnipresent newsboys, or reading them in the big arm-chairs within or on the benches under the trees in the quadrangle, glimpsed in attractive verdure through the open doors of the office. There was continual passing through the halls, and groups filled the verandas and stood about on the sidewalk in front of the hotel, for the great brick pillars that supported the roof of the arcade at the height of the third story were anchored at the curb of the pavement, and this colonnade illustrated the forgotten architect's idea of impressiveness.