"Now I'll take you down," said the butcher, "and show you the store-rooms and refrigerators—you'll be running up and down these steps a good part of the time."
They were no steps, but an iron ladder leading down from the butcher's apartment to a dark passage, where he turned on an electric light.
"Now, these three doors," he said, "are to the three store-rooms—one, two, three."
Tom followed him into one of the rooms. It was large and delightfully cool and immaculately clean. All around were rows of shelves with screen doors before them, and here were stored canned goods—thousands upon thousands of cans, Tom would have said.
"You won't touch anything in here," his superior told him. "None of this will be used before the return trip—maybe not then. Come in here."
Tom followed him through a passage from this room into another exactly like it. Along the passage were great ice box doors. "Cold storage," his superior observed. "You won't have to go in there much."
"Now here's where you'll get your stuff. It's all alphabetical; if you want tomatoes, go to T; if you want salmon—S. Just like a dictionary. If I send you down for thirty pounds of salmon, that doesn't mean thirty cans—see?"
"Yes, sir," said Tom.
"Make up your thirty pounds out of the biggest cans—a twenty and a ten. There's your opener," he added, pointing to a rather complicated mechanical can-opener fastened to the bulkhead. "Open everything before you bring it up."
"Yes, sir."