Daddy Takes Us Skating | Page 5

have them right, I tell you.
"Yes, I'll take you skating, and show you how to stand up on the ice--that is as soon as it is thick enough on the pond to make it safe, and hold us up," promised the children's father.
Just then Mamma Blake came running up from down the cellar. She was much excited.
"Oh, come quickly!" she called to her husband. "Something has happened to the stationary wash-tubs. The water is spurting all over the cellar. Oh, do hurry!"

CHAPTER IV
THE FROZEN POND
Daddy Blake hurried down cellar. Hal and Mab carefully putting away their new skates, followed their father. Roly-Poly, the little fat poodle dog looked around to see if he could find anything to drag off and hide, but, seeing nothing, he went down cellar also, barking loudly at each step.
"Hal! Mab!" called Aunt Lolly. "Come back here, dears!"
"We want to see what has happened!" answered Hal.
"Oh, you'll get hurt! I'm sure you will!" exclaimed the dear, little, fussy old lady aunt.
"No, it isn't anything serious!" called Daddy Blake when he saw what had happened. "Only one of the water pipes has burst. We must send for the plumber. Wait, children, until I shut off the water, and then you can come down. It is like a shower-bath now."
Daddy Blake found the faucet, by which he could shut off the water at the stationary wash-tubs, and then, when it had stopped spurting from the burst pipe, he called to Hal and Mab:
"Now you may come and see how strong ice is. Not only does it burst glass bottles, but it will even crack an iron pipe."
"Just like it cracked a cannon ball!" cried Hal, and he was in such a hurry to get down the cellar steps that he jumped two at a time.
That might have been all right, only Roly-Poly, the little fat poodle dog, did the same thing. He 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, freezing ice is just as strong as gunpowder, only it works more slowly," said Daddy Blake with a smile. "Powder goes off with a puff, a flash and a roar, but ice freezes slowly."
"Oh, but when are we