“We can all drive nails,” insisted Ethel Brown stoutly. “I believe I’ll try.”
But the others laughed at her and reminded her that she would have to drive the nails through rather heavy planking, so she gave up the notion.
“What are the walls going to be made of?” Margaret asked Dorothy.
“Something fireproof, Mother said, but I don’t know what she finally decided on. I’ll ask Mr. Anderson.”
“Plaster on hollow tile,” the contractor answered absent-mindedly over his shoulder, as he walked briskly before them back to the cellar.
The girls saw that he was too full of business now to pay any more attention to them, so they thanked him for giving them so much time and made some investigations on their own account among the piles of material lying about on the grounds.
“I wonder if this could be ‘hollow-tile,’” Ethel Blue said to the rest as she came across a stack of strange-looking pieces of brown earthenware.
“It’s certainly hollow,” returned Ethel Brown, “but I always supposed tiles were flat things. That’s a tile Mother sets the teapot on to keep the heat from harming the polish of the table.”
They stood about the pile of brown, square-edged pipes, roughly glazed inside and out, through whose length ran three square holes. They asked two workmen as they passed what they were. One said “Hollow tile,” and the other, “Terra-cotta.”
“I suspect they’re both right,” Helen decided. “Probably they’re hollow tile made of terra-cotta.”