he had brought
home with him. Something inside jingled and clanked, and shone in the
lamplight as brightly as silver.

"What have you there?" asked Aunt Lolly.

"That's the children's secret," answered Daddy Blake, as he wrapped
the package up again.

Hal was up first in the morning, but Mab soon followed him.

"Daddy, where is the bottle?" called Hal.

"May we get it?" asked Mab.

"Oh, it is much too cold for you to go out until you are warmly
dressed!" cried Daddy. "I'll bring the bottle in so you can see it."

He went out on the porch in his bath robe and slippers, and quickly
brought in the bottle of water he had set out the night before.

"Oh, look!" cried Hal.

For the bottle was broken into several pieces, and standing up on the
board on which it had been set, was a solid, clear piece of ice, just
the shape of the glass bottle itself.

"Oh, somebody broke our bottle!" cried Mab. "Now we can't hear the
secret!"

CHAPTER III

THE NEW SKATES

Daddy Blake laughed when Mab said that.

"Yes, the bottle is broken," he said, "but it was the ice that broke
it."

"How could it?" Hal wanted to know.

"I told you last night," said Daddy Blake, when the children were at
breakfast table a little later, "that heat made things get larger, and
that cold made them get smaller. That was true, but sometimes, as you
see now, freezing cold makes water get larger. That is when it is cold
enough to make ice.

"As long as there was only water in the bottle it was all right, the
glass was not broken. But in the night it got colder and colder. All
the warmth was drawn off into the cold air. Then the water froze, and
swelled up. The ice tried to push the cork out of the bottle, just as
you would try to push up the lid of a box if you were shut up inside
one."

"I guess the wires over the cork wouldn't let the ice push it out,"
spoke Hal.

"That's it," Daddy Blake answered. "And so, as the ice could not lift
out the cork, it swelled to the sides, instead of to the top, and
pushing out as hard as it could, it broke the bottle. The glass fell
away, and left a little statue of ice, just the shape of the bottle,
standing in its place.

"How wonderful!" cried Mab, her blue eyes open wide.

"Yes, the freezing of ice is very wonderful," Daddy Blake said, as he
passed Hal his third slice of bread and jam. "If the cracks in a great
rock became filled with water, and the water froze, the swelling of
the ice would