pipe.”

“What’s to prevent the water running off all the time?” Ethel Blue wanted to know.

“Keep a plug in it,” answered the contractor briefly. “And there should be waterproofing stuff mixed with the materials. You have your gardener dig a hole in the garden,” he said, adding, “don’t forget to have plenty of grease.”

“What’s that for?”

“Why do you grease your cake pans?”

“So the cake won’t stick.”

“Same here. On the cellar wall we lined the inside of the wooden forms with paper. That isn’t so easy with round forms, so you grease them.”

“I never thought there was any likeness between concrete and cooking,” laughed Ethel Brown as the girls watched Mr. Anderson’s skill in taking his little car over the rough ground around the cellar excavation, “but there seems to be plenty.”

“Let’s chase off and see if we can collect the things we shall need to-morrow,” urged Dorothy. “I’ll have to find Patrick and bring him here and show him just where to dig the hole.”

“Where are you going to dig the hole?”

“I think just in the open place on top of the ridge.”

“I wouldn’t,” objected Ethel Brown.

“Why not?”

“Won’t it be too warm in summer? If you’re going to have gold fish you don’t want to boil them.”

“The water would get pretty hot in the sun, wouldn’t it?” considered her cousin. “What do you think of a place under that tree?”

“It ought not to be too near the tree because the roots will grow out a long way from the trunk of the tree and they might get under the pool and break up the concrete.”

“Oh, could a tender little thing like a root break concrete that’s as hard as stone?”

“It certainly can. Grandfather showed me a crack in a concrete wall of his on the farm that was made by the root of a big tree not far off.”

“Well, then we can’t have our pool anywhere near a tree. A shrub wouldn’t hurt it, though; why can’t it go near those shrubs that are going to separate the flower garden from the vegetable garden?”

“That place would be all right because there’s a tall spruce there that throws a shadow over the shrubs for a part of the day. That’s all you need; you don’t want to take away all the sunshine from the pool.”

So the exact spot was decided on and marked so that Patrick should make no mistake, and then the girls rushed off on a search for shallow basins and a tub.

CHAPTER II
PLAYING WITH CONCRETE

It was not the Ethels and Dorothy alone who appeared at the “new place” the next afternoon to make the experiments with concrete. Helen, Ethel Brown’s elder sister, and her friend, Margaret Hancock, of Glen Point, were so interested in the younger girls’ account of what they were going to do with Mr. Anderson’s help that they came too.

As they puffed up the steep knoll on which the new house was to stand they stopped beside the cellar hole to see what progress had been made since the day before.

“They have just frisked along!” Dorothy exclaimed when she saw that not only was the inside fence-mold all built but that the concrete floor was laid and that the men were pouring the mixture in between the planks and the earth wall and pounding it down as they poured.

“Mr. Anderson said ‘you can’t fool round when you’re working with concrete,’” Ethel Brown repeated. “They aren’t, are they?”

The men were all working as fast as they could move, some of them shovelling the materials into the mixer, others running the machine, others wheeling the wet concrete in iron barrows to the men at the edge of the cellar who tamped it down as fast as it was poured into the narrow space that defined the growing wall.

“When it is full, way up to the top, what happens next?” Dorothy inquired of Mr. Anderson who came over to where they were standing.

“Then we’re going to build on it a three foot wall of concrete blocks to support the upper part of the house.”

“That’s the wall that has the cellar windows in it?”

“Yes.”

“Then do make good big ones; Mother likes a bright cellar,” urged Dorothy.

“We’re going to make her a beauty,” promised the contractor. “Come up into your garden now and let’s get this concrete work up there done. Here, Luigi,” he called to an Italian, “bring us a load of concrete over there,” and he waved his hand in the direction of the spot where Patrick had dug the hole for the tub.

They all examined the hole with care and the Ethels fitted in the tub and found that their digger had done his work skilfully, since there were just about three inches between the earth and the tub all around. They pulled the tub out again and under Mr. Anderson’s direction they greased it thoroughly.

“We want to do every bit we can ourselves,” they insisted when he suggested that Luigi might do that part for them.

“Don’t forget the hole for the drainage,” he reminded them. “Have you got your stick? And on which side are you going to have that?”

They surveyed the ground about the hole and decided that a drainage pipe might run a few inches underground for a short distance and discharge itself at the edge of a bank below which a vegetable garden was to lie.

The Way the Pool Looked When It Was Done

“If you’re careful what you plant there it will be an advantage to the ground to have this dampening once in a while,” said Mr. Anderson, who was something of a gardener. “There won’t be enough water to drown out any of your plants.”

Luigi emptied a load of concrete into the hole and while he was gone to get a new supply the girls thumped it down hard, fitted in the greased tub and wedged a bit of broomstick which Roger, Ethel Brown’s brother, had cut for Dorothy into the space between the tub and the earth just at the top of the concrete flooring. When Luigi came back they were ready to thump as he poured and three loads filled up the space entirely.

“Now, then, Luigi will bring you one of the smoothing tools that the men over there are using and you can make the top look even,” and Mr. Anderson gave more instructions to the Italian.

“It will be pretty to have some plants at the edge so they’ll bend over and see themselves in the water,” suggested Margaret.

“I should think there must be some water plants that would grow inside without much trouble,” Ethel Blue said.

“We must look that up; they’d probably need a little soil of some sort,” Helen reminded them.

“They’d be awfully pretty,” said Dorothy complacently. “Don’t you seem to see it—with gold fish swimming around among the stems?”

“Dicky might lend us his old turtle,” laughed Ethel Brown. “He’s tired of taking care of it. You could put a stick in here partly above the water, for him to sun himself on. I don’t see why he wouldn’t be quite happy here.”

Dicky’s turtle was a family joke. Dicky had found him two years before and had taken him home thinking he was a piece of stone. His excitement and terror when the stone lying on the library table stuck out first a head and then one leg after another to the number of four, had never been forgotten by the people who saw him at this thrilling moment.

“Now for your bird’s