e became tangled up in Hal's legs, and,
a moment later, the little boy and the dog were rolling toward the
bottom of the steps, over and over just like a pumpkin.

"Oh!" cried Mab, holding fast to the handrail, a little frightened.

"Oh my!" exclaimed Mamma Blake at the top of the cellar steps. "What
has happened?"

"Oh my goodness me sakes alive and some orange pudding!" exclaimed
Aunt Lolly. "I just knew _something_ would happen!"

But nothing much did, after all, for Daddy Blake, as soon as he heard
Hal falling, ran to the foot of the stairs, and there he caught his
little boy before Hal had bounced down many steps.

"There you are!" cried Daddy Blake, as he set Hal upright on his feet.
"Not hurt a bit; are you?"

"N-n-n-n-no!" stammered Hal, as he caught his breath, which had almost
gotten away from him. "I'm not hurt. Is Roly-Poly?"

Roly was whirling about, barking and trying to catch his tail, so I
guess he was not much hurt. The truth was that both Hal and Roly were
so fat and plump, that falling down a few cellar steps did not hurt
them in the least.

"Well, now we'll look at the burst water pipe," said Daddy Blake,
when the excitement was over. The water had stopped spurting out now,
though there was quite a puddle of it on the cellar floor by the tubs.

Mr. Blake lifted Hal across this, and showed him where there was a big
crack in the water pipe. Then he showed Mab, also lifting her across
the little pond in the cellar.

"You see the pipe was full of water," Mr. Blake explained, "and in the
night it got so cold down cellar that the water froze, just as it did
in the glass bottle out on the back porch.

"Then the ice swelled up, and it was so strong that it burst the
strong iron pipe, splitting it right down the side."

"But why didn't the water spurt out when I came down cellar earlier
this morning?" asked Mamma Blake. "It did not leak then."

"I suppose it was still frozen," answered her husband. "But when the
furnace fire became hotter it melted the ice in the pipe and that let
the water spurt out. But the plumber will soon fix it."

Hal and Mab watched the plumber, to whom their papa telephoned. He had
to take out the broken pipe, and put in a new piece. Afterward Hal
looked at the pipe that had been split by the ice.

"Why it's just as if gun-powder blew it up," he said, for once he had
seen a toy cannon that had burst on Fourth of July, from having too
much powder in it.

"Yes, freez