Eddie glanced at the kitchen clock. “Oh, boy,” he said, “I’d better be heading back home. I didn’t mean to come over here and talk so long.”
“Oh, we’re glad you did, Eddie,” Mrs. Ross said. “I’m afraid too few of us know anything about this atom business.”
“That’s right, Mrs. Ross,” Eddie agreed. “People should talk more and read more about it. After all, this is an atomic age. We might as well face it. My father says that in horse-and-buggy days everyone knew how to feed a horse and grease a wagon wheel. They knew what was needed to get the work done. But now that atoms are being harnessed to do the work, not many people even bother to find out what an atom is.”
Mrs. Ross smiled. “I guess you’re right, Eddie,” she said, “but I wouldn’t quite know how to go about feeding an atom.”
“Or greasing one,” Teena added.
Eddie laughed. “I sure wouldn’t want the job of trying to feed a herd of them the size of a period,” he said. “Did you know that there are about three million billion atoms of carbon in a single period printed at the end of a sentence. That’s how small atoms are.”
“Three million billion is a lot of something,” a man’s voice spoke behind him. “What are we talking about, Eddie?”
“Oh, hello, Mr. Ross,” Eddie said, turning around and standing up. “I didn’t hear you come in.”
Teena’s father was a medium-sized man with light-brown hair which was getting somewhat thin on top. He was usually quite cheerful and full of fun, but tonight his face seemed unusually drawn and sober. He stepped to the table, leaned over, and gave both Teena and Mrs. Ross a kiss on the cheek.
“Eddie was telling us about atoms,” Teena’s mother said. “Did you know there were three million billion of them in a period?”