By the time Tony had dumped the three barrows of concrete into the trench, Bob had another batch ready for the machine, and while this was being mixed Tony leveled off the concrete in the trench even with the grade stakes, set in the trench six inches above the bottom. By night the footings were completed. They now located and dug the footings for the piers of the cross partitions and concreted them, so as to give the cement of the main footings a chance to set up before they began putting the forms on top of them. They could have saved the forms below grade by making the excavation the exact width of the foundation wall, but they felt this was poor economy, for the work was uncertain and rough, and the extra labor caused by trying to fit the forms to the sloping ground would more than offset the little saving; besides, it took more cement to fill in irregular trenches than it did ones of exact size. They had taken the forms they used for the dairy house foundation, together with some new sections, and set them up on the new footing, using wooden spreaders for holding them the right distance apart and placing heavy wires through the hole in the forms, the ends of which encircled a pin and were twisted up tight securing the forms firmly together. The three-foot form sections brought the top of the forms just under the line, which was now stretched between the nails marked "B.L." and the outside of the wall was correctly located. They drove pegs into the ground on both sides and braced the top of the forms to hold them to the exact line. They had only twenty sections, each ten feet long, enough for one end and four sections down each side, so Bob decided to put in the forms at the north end and concrete them, and then remove them to the south end. When the concrete there was sufficiently hard they could set up the forms between the two ends thus finished. This would provide three expansion joints on each side, which would be just right. They had just completed the erection of the forms for the north end and filled the hopper with a new batch, ready to be hoisted into the drum, when Bob happened to look toward the barn and saw the car come to a stop in the barnyard. By the time he had cranked the engine, the occupants of the car had alighted and his uncle was starting for the house, his arms full of suitcases. Bob noticed that one of the girls who had alighted was of medium height and slender, while the other was short and rather stout. "Is that your new hen house?" he heard the stout one inquire of his aunt, as he stopped the engine on the mixer, and she looked over in Bob's direction. Bob had again filled the drum and was watching the mixing of the concrete a few moments later, when he heard someone behind him and turned around.