Lesson 60 PART B
Too early and too late
If you are catching a train, it is always better to be comfortably early than even a fraction of a minute too late. Although being early may mean wasting a little time, this will be less than if you miss the train and have to wait an hour or more for the next one; and you avoid the frustration of arriving at the very moment when the train is drawing out of the station and being unable to get on it. (1)_______________________. Such an experience befell a certain young girl the first time she was traveling alone.
(2)_______________________. She gave her luggage to a porter and showed him her ticket. To her horror he said that she was two hours too soon. She felt inhere handbag for the piece of paper on which her father had written down all the details of the journey and gave it to the porter. He agreed that a train did come into the station at the time on the paper and that it did stop, but only to take on mail, not passengers. The girl asked to see a timetable, feeling sure that her father could not have made such a mistake. The porter went to fetch one and arrive back with the station master, who produced it with a flourish and pointed out a microscopic 'o' beside the time of the arrival of the train at his station; this little 'o' indicated that the train only stopped for mail. Just as that moment the train came into the station. The girl, tears streaming down her face, begged to be allowed to slip into the guard's van. But the station master was adamant: rules could not be broken and she had to watch that train disappear towards her destination while she was left behind.
