“Well, there aren’t any ‘steps’ around this family, so we can’t tell by our own experience,” cried Dorothy, “and we’ve got this chicken family moved into its new house, so let’s go and see what the workmen are doing at our new house.”
Dorothy’s mother had been planning for several months to build a house on a lot of land on the same street that they were living on now, but farther away from the Mortons’ and nearer the farm where lived the Mortons’ grandfather and grandmother, Mr. and Mrs. Emerson. The contractor had been at work only a few days.
“He had just finished staking off the ground when I was there the other afternoon,” said Ethel Brown.
“He’s way ahead of that now,” Dorothy reported as they walked on, three abreast across the sidewalk, their blue serge suits all alike, their Tipperary hats set at the same angle on their heads, and only the different colors of their eyes and hair distinguishing them to a careless observer. “He told me yesterday that the whole cellar would be dug by this afternoon and they would be beginning to put in the concrete wall.”
“Where?”
“The cellar wall.”
“I thought cellar walls were made of stone.”
“Sometimes they are, but when there isn’t stone all cut, concrete is more convenient and cheaper, too.”
“And it lasts forever, I was reading the other day.”
“I should say it did. Those old Pyramids in Egypt are partly made of concrete, they think, and they are three or four thousand years old.”