And so it was.

“Is this the blizzard?” asked Violet.

“Pretty close to it,” answered Grandpa Ford.

Just then the train gave a sudden jerk, rattling every one in his seat, and came to a stop.

CHAPTER IX

AT TARRINGTON

“Are we there?” cried Laddie, as he slid out of his seat and turned to Grandpa Ford.  “Are we at Great Hedge?”

“Well, if we are, the train must have run into it, and got stuck fast,” answered the old gentleman with a smile.

“What made it bump so?” asked Violet.

“I think we must have hit a snow bank, or else some of the rails and switches are stopped up with snow,” answered Daddy Bunker.

It was getting quite dark, because of the snow clouds outside, and the electric lights of the train had been switched on.  Every one in the car where the Bunkers rode, and, I suppose, in each of the other cars of the train, had been well shaken up when it stopped so suddenly.  But no one had really been hurt.

“Perhaps we had better see what it is,” said Daddy Bunker to his stepfather.  “Perhaps the train can’t go any farther, and we can’t get to Tarrington.”

“Oh, can’t we go to Grandpa’s?” asked Rose, looking as if she could not bear to have such a dreadful thing happen.  “I want to go!”

“If the train can’t go we can get out and walk,” suggested Russ.  “I like to walk in the snow.  If I had some lawn tennis rackets I could make snowshoes for all of us, and we could walk on them.”

“But you haven’t any tennis rackets,” observed Laddie.  “And you can’t get any on the train, lessen maybe the boy that had Mun Bun’s popgun has some.”

“They don’t play lawn tennis in winter,” said Rose.

“Hush, children, dear,” begged Mrs. Bunker, for they were raising their voices as they talked.  “We want to hear what the trainman says.”

“What happened that made us stop so quickly, and with such a bump?” asked Grandpa Ford, as the railroad man came in covered with the white flakes.  “Was there an accident?”

“A little one,” the man answered.  “But we’ll soon be all right.  The snow clogged and stopped up a switch, and the engineer was afraid he would get on the wrong track, so he put on the brakes quickly and made a short and sudden stop.  But we are going to dig away the snow, and then, I think, we can go on again.”

“We want to go to Grandpa Ford’s,” spoke up Violet, as she stood close to the trainman.  “Will the train take us there?”

“It will if the snow will let us, little girl,” was the answer, and many passengers in the train laughed at Vi’s funny question.

The brakeman hurried out, and some of the men passengers, putting on their heavy overcoats, went with him.  It was too dark outside for any of the six little Bunkers to see anything that was going on.  But by placing their faces close against the windows of the car and holding a hand on either side of the face to shut out the light in the car, they could see a little way into the darkness outside.