One was supposed to see red when one was furious. But she saw only white.

“You, sir,” she said above the noise of the horses and of Thomas and the hunchbacked snowman exchanging vigorous and colorful abuse of each other, “deserve to be hanged, drawn, and quartered. You deserve to be flayed alive. You deserve to be boiled in oil.”

The eyebrow that had already offended her once rose again. So did the other.

“And you, ma’am,” he said in clipped tones that matched the expression on his face, “deserve to be locked up in a dark dungeon as a public nuisance for venturing out onto the king’s highway in such an old boat. It is a veritable fossil. Any museum would reject it as far too ancient a vehicle to be of any interest to its clientele.”

“And its age and the caution of my driver give you the right to endanger several lives by overtaking it in such appalling conditions?” she asked rhetorically, toe to toe with him though none of their toes were visible above the snow. “Perhaps, sir, someone ought to relate to you the story of the tortoise and the hare.”

“Meaning?” He dropped both eyebrows and then cocked just the original one.

“Your reckless speed has brought you to grief,” she said, jabbing a finger in the direction of the blue carriage, which completely blocked the road ahead—though it did appear to be on the road, she saw when she looked directly at it. “You are no farther ahead after all.”

“If you will use your eyes for looking instead of just flashing fire and brimstone, ma’am,” he said, “you will see that we have come to a bend in the road, and that my coachman—and I too until I was interrupted by your coachman’s ineptitude in drawing from a crawl to a complete halt—is clearing a drift of snow so that my hare may proceed on its way. Your tortoise, on the other hand, is deep in a snowdrift and will be going nowhere for some time to come. Certainly not today.”