noon
Lloyd turned to the window again and tried to busy herself with the scenes flying past : the peasant women with handkerchiefs over their heads , and the men in blue cotton blouses and wooden shoes at work in the fields ; the lime-trees and the vineyards , the milk-carts that dogs helped to draw . It was all as Joyce had described it to her , and she pinched herself to make sure that she was awake , and actually in France , speeding along toward the Gate of the Giant Scissors , and all the delightful foreign experience that Joyce had talked about . She had dreamed many day-dreams about this journey , but the thought that was giving her most pleasure now was not that these dreams were at last coming true , but that in a very short time she would be face to face with Betty and Eugenia . It was noon when they reached Tours , and went rattling up to the Hotel Bordeaux in the big omnibus . At first Lloyd was disposed to find fault with the quaint , old-fashioned hotel which Cousin Carl had chosen as their meeting-place . It had no conveniences like the modern ones to which she had been accustomed . There was not even an elevator in it .