The girls nodded.
“They are making a fence all around the cellar you see; that is to keep the concrete in place when it is poured in, and to give it shape.”
“Is it soft like mud?”
“It is made of one part of cement and two and one-half parts of sand and five parts of gravel. Do you cook?”
They all nodded again.
“When you come to-morrow you’ll see the mixing machine making a stiff batter of those three things—cement and sand and gravel.”
“It must be like putting raisins in a plum pudding,” suggested Ethel Brown. “You have to be careful the stones—the raisins—don’t all sink to the bottom or get bunched together in one place.”
“That’s the idea,” smiled Mr. Anderson. “All those things and water go into one end of the mixer and they come out at the other end concrete in a soft state. Then the men shovel the stuff into the space between the fence and the earth bank, making sure that that widening trench at the foot is chock full and they thump it down and let it ‘set.’”
“I think the cellar will look very ugly with that old plank wall,” decided Dorothy seriously.
“The planks will be taken away.”