"Are you really going to make a cucumber grow in a bottle?" asked Mab as she saw her aunt, with a bottle in her hand, stooping over one of the vines.
"I really am," was the answer. "It is only a little trick, though, and really does no good. But I thought you children would like to see it."
"How are you going to do it?" asked Hal.
"You see this little cucumber, or pickle," spoke Aunt Lolly, and she showed one to Hal and Mab. "Well now I'm going to slip it inside this bottle, but not pull the pickle from the vine. If I did that the cucumber would stop growing and die."
She had a bottle with a neck large enough so the pickle would go in it. The bottle was an odd shape.
"The pickle will grow large and completely fill the bottle," went on Aunt Lolly. "It will grow because it is not broken off the stem, and the bottle, being glass, will let in the sunshine. The neck is also large enough so air can get in, for without air, sunlight and the food it gets through the stem the pickle would not live.
"But as it grows it will swell and fill every part of the bottle and it also will grow just to the shape of the bottle, so that in the Fall, when it can't grow any more, because of the strong glass, I can break the bottle and I will have a pickle shaped just like it, curves, queer twists and everything else."
"Oh, how funny!" cried Hal "I wonder if I could grow an ear of corn in a bottle?"
"No," answered his aunt. "An ear of corn has to grow inside the husk, and you could not, very well, put a bottle over that."
"Could I over one of my beans?" asked Mab.