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 wo n'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 ai n'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 had n'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 XXXXX it could not go on .
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