“Don’t you remember how it was when we were planning Dorothy’s garden on top of this ridge, back of the house and the garage?” Ethel Brown reminded them. “We had to draw several positions for the different beds because some of our plans looked perfectly crazy—just a mess of square beds and oblong beds and round beds.”
“They made you dizzy—I remember. We found we had to follow Roger’s advice and make them balance.”
“Helen says there’s a lot of geometry in laying out a garden. I guess she’s right.”
Helen and Roger were Ethel Brown’s older sister and brother. They were in the high school.
They had come now to the excavation for the cellar and watched the Italian laborers throwing out the last shovelfuls of earth.
“They’re very particular about making the earth wall smooth,” commented Ethel Brown.
“I imagine they have to if the wall is to be concrete,” returned Dorothy.
“They’ve cut it under queerly at the foot on both sides; what’s that for?”
“I haven’t the dimmest,” answered Dorothy briefly. “Let’s ask Mr. Anderson.”
“You’d find it hard to stand up straight if you had only a leg to stand on and not a foot,” that gentleman answered to the question. “That concrete foot gives a good solid foundation, and it helps to repel the frost if that should get into the ground so deep. Do you see the planks the men are setting up twelve inches in from the bank?”