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“There’s a cold roast chicken in the pantry,” said Lucy Rose wickedly, “and the pig Uncle Leo killed is hanging up in the porch. Couldn’t you put them in too?”

Aunt Cyrilla smiled broadly. “Well, I guess we’ll leave the pig alone; but since you have reminded me of it, the chicken may as well go in. I can make room.”

Lucy Rose, in spite of her prejudices, helped with the packing and, not having been trained under Aunt Cyrilla’s eye for nothing, did it very well too, with much clever economy of space. But when Aunt Cyrilla had put in as a finishing touch a big bouquet of pink and white everlastings, and tied the bulging covers down with a firm hand, Lucy Rose stood over the basket and whispered vindictively:

“Some day I’m going to burn this basket–when I get courage enough. Then there’ll be an end of lugging it everywhere we go like a–like an old market-woman.”

Uncle Leopold came in just then, shaking his head dubiously. He was not going to spend Christmas with Edward and Geraldine, and perhaps the prospect of having to cook and eat his Christmas dinner all alone made him pessimistic.

“I mistrust you folks won’t get to Pembroke tomorrow,” he said sagely. “It’s going to storm.”

Aunt Cyrilla did not worry over this. She believed matters of this kind were fore-ordained, and she slept calmly. But Lucy Rose got up three times in the night to see if it were storming, and when she did sleep had horrible nightmares of struggling through blinding snowstorms dragging Aunt Cyrilla’s Christmas basket along with her.

It was not snowing in the early morning, and Uncle Leopold drove Aunt Cyrilla and Lucy Rose and the basket to the station, four miles off. When they reached there the air was thick with flying flakes. The stationmaster sold them their tickets with a grim face.

“If there’s any more snow comes, the trains might as well keep Christmas too,” he said. “There’s been so much snow already that traffic is blocked half the time, and now there ain’t no place to shovel the snow off onto.”

Aunt Cyrilla said that if the train were to get to Pembroke in time for Christmas, it would get there; and she opened her basket and gave the stationmaster and three small boys an apple apiece.

“That’s the beginning,” groaned Lucy Rose to herself.

When their train came along Aunt Cyrilla established herself in one seat and her basket in another, and looked beamingly around her at her fellow travellers.

These were few in number–a delicate little woman at the end of the car, with a baby and four other children, a young girl across the aisle with a pale, pretty face, a sunburned lad three seats ahead in a khaki uniform, a very handsome, imposing old lady in a sealskin coat ahead of him, and a thin young man with spectacles opposite.

“A minister,” reflected Aunt Cyrilla, beginning to classify, “who takes better care of other folks’ souls than of his own body; and that woman in the sealskin is discontented and cross at something–got up too early to catch the train, maybe; and that young chap must be one of the boys not long out of the hospital. That woman’s children look as if they hadn’t enjoyed a square meal since they were born; and if that girl across from me has a mother, I’d like to know what the woman means, letting her daughter go from home in this weather in clothes like that.”

Lucy Rose merely wondered uncomfortably what the others thought of Aunt Cyrilla’s basket.

They expected to reach Pembroke that night, but as the day wore on the storm grew worse. Twice the train had to stop while the train hands dug it out. The third time it could not go on. It was dusk when the conductor came through the train, replying brusquely to the questions of the anxious passengers.