matter how strange it was.

CHAPTER XII

A GREAT SURPRISE

"How do you get the ice out of this big house when you want it in the
summer time?" asked Hal, as the foreman led them along the wooden
platforms out of the big, cold storehouse. And how much warmer it was
outside; even if the sun did not shine, than it was in the ice house.
The children were glad to come out.

"We load the ice from here into freight cars," the man explained.
"See, the ice house is built in two parts, with a passage-way between.
And is this passage is a railroad track. The engine backs a freight
car in here, the big doors of the car are opened, and the ice is slid
in on wooden chutes, something like the iron chutes the coal man uses.
Then, when the car is full, it is pulled down to the city in a long
train, with other cars."

"And then the icemen come with their wagons, get the ice and bring it
to us," finished Mab. "I've seen them."

"That's right, little lady!" said the foreman with a laugh. And
sometimes ice comes to the city by a boat, instead of in freight cars,
and the men with wagons go down to the boat-dock to get the cold,
frozen cakes. And now you have seen how ice is cut in winter, and
stored away until we need it in the summer."

"My!" exclaimed Hal, as he looked up at the big ice store-house.
"There must be enough ice in there for the whole world!"

"Oh, no indeed!" cried Daddy Blake. "No enough for one city. And
besides this ice, which is called natural, because Jack Frost and
Mother Nature make it, there is other ice, called artificial. That is
what is made by machinery."

"Why, can anybody make ice by machinery?" asked Mab in surprise.

"Oh, yes, even on the hottest day in summer," her papa told her. "But
it takes a lot of machinery. It is done by putting water into small
metal tanks, and then by taking all the warmth out of the water by
dipping the tanks into a big vat of salt and water which is made very
cold by something called ammonia. It is too hard for you to understand
now, but when you get older I will explain. Now I think we had better
be skating home," said Daddy Blake.

As they walked down to the frozen lake, there was a barking sound from
a small shed under which was an engine, that hauled up the ice cakes.
Out from the shed rushed a little dog, spotted black and white, and
straight for the Blake children he rushed, barking and wagging his
tail so that it almost wagged off.

"Look out!" cried D