deliberately preparing for a crisis, but in her own case it somehow never
seemed to work. For example, how could she plan what to say to Mr. Blake
until she knew what Mr. Blake would say to her? It would be bad enough to
try to answer him when the time came, without worrying about it now.

After a brief survey of the flying landscape, which looked uniformly cold
and uninviting under a leaden sky, and of her fellow-travelers, none of
whom promised any possibilities of amusement, Betty remembered that she
had intended to study all the way to New York, and accordingly extracted
Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales" from her bag. For half an hour she read the
Knight's tale busily. But the adventures of Palamon and Arcite,
deciphered by means of assiduous reference to the glossary, were not
exciting; at the end of the half hour Betty's head drooped back against
the plush cushions, her eyes closed, and her book slid unheeded to the
floor. Regardless of all the elegant leisure that she had meant to secure
by a diligent five-hour attack upon "The Canterbury Tales," Betty had
fallen fast asleep.

Some time later the jolt of the halting train woke her. She glanced at
her watch--it was twelve o'clock--and looked out for the station sign.
But there was no station sign and no station; only snowy fields
stretching off to meet wooded hills on one side and the gorge of a frozen
river on the other. It had been a gray, sunless morning; now the air was
thick with snow, falling in big, lazily-moving flakes which seemed
undecided whether or not the journey they were making was worth their
while. All this Betty saw through small bare spots on the heavily frosted
car windows. She picked up "The Canterbury Tales" from the floor where
they had fallen, found her place and sat with her finger in the book,
anxiously waiting for the train to go on. But it did not start. The other
passengers also grew restless, and asked one another what could be the