Frances did not bother to reply. She pushed open the door that she guessed led to the kitchen while he went back out into the snow to help his coachman unload the carriage.

The building was chilly and cheerless. The windows were small and let in very little light even though there was so much whiteness outside. Her feet inside her boots were wet and cold. The inn was not dirty, but neither was it sparkling clean. She dared not take off either her cloak or her bonnet lest she freeze. There was no one to see to her needs except for one slovenly, lazy serving man. There was no one to prepare a hot meal—or even a cold one for that matter. And she was alone here with one bad-tempered, ill-mannered gentleman and three crotchety menservants.

The situation was decidedly grim.

She was expected back at the school today. The girls would be returning for the new term the day after tomorrow. There was much work to do before then if she was to have her classes all ready for the following morning—she had deliberately not worked over Christmas. There was a pile of French essays by the senior class waiting to be marked and an even larger pile of stories—in English—from the junior girls.

This whole turn of events with its resulting delay was more than grim. It was a total disaster.

But as Frances first looked about the kitchen and then explored tentatively and then more boldly in drawers and cupboards and pantry, and finally went in search of Wally and ordered him into the kitchen to clean out the ashes in the large grate and build another fire and light it, she decided that practicality was the only sane way of dealing with the situation.

And perhaps looking back on this day from the safety of school once she finally got there, she would see it after all more in the light of an adventure than a disaster. She might even find something funny in the memories. It was hard to imagine such an outcome now, but she supposed this might well be considered an adventure of the first order.