Zeely Read Free

children. He said nothing about it, however. He left them so they could roam the house on their own. “Well, call me if you find anything you don’t know about,” he said to them as he left.
    There was a pantry in Uncle Ross’ house. Toeboy and Geeder hung on to the door and looked inside carefully.
    “I don’t remember this at all,” Toeboy said.
    “Well, I do,” Geeder said. “I don’t remember it being so large, though, with so much food.”
    They couldn’t decide if the pantry had been there the last time they visited the farm, so they called Uncle Ross. When he came, he told them the pantry had been just where they found it since the house was built.
    “There’s not another house in these parts with a pantry this size,” he told them. He stood rocking on his heels in the center of the room, smiling proudly. “Each year, I put up beans, tomatoes, applesauce and jelly, among other things. Oh, I don’t use half of it in a year,” he said, “but I like giving it to folks in the village. These days, not many people put up food the way I was taught to.”
    The pantry was a large square. On every side were cupboards full of canned goods up to the ceiling. Geeder walked to the center of the room and slowly turned around until she had every cupboard fixed in her mind.
    “Isn’t it just the nicest place?” she said. “I love it, with all the jars and big cupboards.”
    Uncle Ross laughed. “Well, then, you can come in every day and pick out all the food we’ll need for each meal. That way, you’ll get to know this pantry as well as I do and it will get to know you.”
    Toeboy wasn’t much interested in the canned goods or the cupboards, even if they did reach clear up to the ceiling. But he did want to stand in his bare feet on the cement floor. He took off his shoes and socks hastily, and stood there. The coolness curled his toes.
    “I think I’ll just sit on the floor,” Geeder said. She sat down with her back against the wall. She felt comfortable and decided she would sit on the floor for five or ten minutes each day.
    Off the pantry there was a pump room.
    “What in the world kind of place is this?” asked Toeboy.
    “Uncle Ross—Uncle Ross!” Geeder called. He had left so that they could explore again. “Look, come and see this place! ”
    Uncle Ross came in a hurry, wondering what discovery the children had made in his old, familiar house. Then he saw it was the pump room. It was his favorite place of all.
    “Now, you’ve come to something!” Uncle Ross said. “It’s been thirty years since a house was built with one of these rooms.”
    “What in the world do you use it for?” Toeboy asked.
    “Maybe you won’t want to use it for anything,” Uncle Ross said, “but I come in here when I need a drink of water that’s finer than any other.”
    The pump room was quite a small place with just a hand pump attached to a square tub.
    “Before there was running water in houses,” Uncle Ross said, “people had pump rooms. There, they filled buckets with ice-cold well water for drinking and for heating on the top of wood-burning stoves.”
    Toeboy went up to the pump and cautiously pumped the handle a few times. There wasn’t even a trickle of water.
    “The pump has to be primed,” Uncle Ross said to Toeboy. “Go get a pitcher from the dining room and fill it with water from the tap in the kitchen.”
    When Toeboy came back with the full pitcher, Uncle Ross showed him how to pour it slowly into the opening around the plunger.
    “Now. You pump the handle,” he said to Geeder.
    Geeder pumped. Soon, they heard a dry, harsh sound. A minute later, water came gushing out.
    “Have a drink,” Uncle Ross said. He took a tin cup from a hook by the door and filled it, first offering it to Geeder and then to Toeboy.
    “Oh!” Geeder said. “That’s just the sweetest water!”
    From that moment on, they refused to drink the perfectly good water from the sink in the kitchen and feasted in