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 split the great, strong stone.

"There is scarcely anything that can stand against the swelling of
freezing ice. If you filled a big, hollow cannon ball with water, and
let it freeze, the ice would burst the iron."

"It burst our milk bottle once, I know," said Aunt Lolly.

"Yes," spoke Daddy Blake. "That is why, on cold mornings, the milkman
raises the tin top on the bottle. That gives the frozen milk a chance
to swell up out of the top, and saves the bottle from cracking."

"One morning last winter," said Mamma Blake, "when we had milk bottles
with the pasteboard tops, the milk froze and there was a round bit of
frozen milk sticking up out of the bottle, with the round pasteboard
cover on top, like a hat."

"And that's what saved the bottle from breaking," said Daddy Blake,
"If I had not wired down the cork of our bottle the water would have
pushed itself up, after it was frozen, and would have stuck out of the
bottle neck, like a round icicle."