Read "Aunt Cyrilla's Christmas Basket" by Lucy Maud Montgomery online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
When Lucy Rose met Aunt Cyrilla coming downstairs, somewhat flushed and breathless from her ascent to the garret, with a big, flat-covered basket hanging over her plump arm, she gave a little sigh of despair. Lucy Rose had done her brave best for some years -- in fact, ever since she had put up her hair and lengthened her skirts -- to break Aunt Cyrilla of the habit of carrying that basket with her every time she went to Pembroke; but Aunt Cyrilla still insisted on taking it, and only laughed at what she called Lucy Rose's "finicky notions. " Lucy Rose had a horrible, haunting idea that it was extremely provincial for her aunt always to take the big basket, packed full of country good things, whenever she went to visit Edward and Geraldine. Geraldine was so stylish, and might think it queer; and then Aunt Cyrilla always would carry it on her arm and give cookies and apples and molasses taffy out of it to every child she encountered and, just as often as not, to older folks too. Lucy Rose, when she went to town with Aunt Cyrilla, felt chagrined over this -- all of which goes to prove that Lucy was as yet very young and had a great deal to learn in this world.
That troublesome worry over what Geraldine would think nerved her to make a protest in this instance.