“Now for some ice cream!” cried Russ, as they drove home. “I don’t believe you could find ice in the summer time in many places, could you?” he asked.
“Well, no,” his father told him. “Not every place has an ice cave, though they are not as rare as you might suppose. Sometimes, in deep, rocky glens where the sun seldom shines, I have seen ice as late as the end of May. But I never saw a real ice cave before.”
“A polar bear could live in that cave, couldn’t he?” asked Mun Bun on the way home.
“Yes, it might for a little while,” said Farmer Joel, “but I guess it would miss the ocean. Polar bears need salt water to swim in, as well as ice chunks to keep them cool.”
“I hope no polar bear comes to live in that cave while we’re here,” remarked Margy.
“Don’t worry, darling!” laughed her mother. “None will.”
There was plenty of the ice left when the farmhouse was reached. Russ and Laddie took it from the wagon and cracked it in burlap bags, while Farmer Joel brought out some coarse salt with which to mix it. Salt always causes ice to melt faster, and it is only when ice melts and gives out the cold locked up in it that ice cream can be made.
Norah soon had the freezer full of a mixture of sugar, cream and some sliced bananas, since the children liked that flavor, and in a little while Russ and Laddie were turning the handle.
By supper time the ice cream was frozen, and for dessert they had a dainty dish made from ice brought in the middle of summer from the dark cave. The six little Bunkers thought it quite wonderful.
The next day Rose saw Farmer Joel carrying what seemed to be a pail of thick, yellow sour cream out of the kitchen.