"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 drawn¹ off into the cold air. Then the water froze, and swelled² up. The ice tried to push the cork⁴ 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," spoke⁵ 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, standing⁶ 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 swelling⁷ 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 cannon⁸ ball with water, and let it freeze, the ice would burst the iron."

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