ter 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.

"A nice lookout for Christmas--no, impossible to go on or back--track
blocked for miles--what's that, madam?--no, no station near--woods for
miles. We're here for the night. These storms of late have played the
mischief with everything."

"Oh, dear," groaned Lucy Rose.

Aunt Cyrilla looked at her basket complacently. "At any rate, we won't
starve," she said.

The pale, pretty girl seemed indifferent. The sealskin lady looked
crosser than ever. The khaki boy said, "Jus