“Now,” Eleanor said, “let’s talk for a while before we go home. There’s a bag of peanuts under my coat. Will you bring it, please, Pietro?” She took the bag and grouped the boys around the long table. “Now let’s play a game while we eat. I’ll ask questions, and the one that answers quickest gets some peanuts. Listen now: if I give Pietro six peanuts and Giovanni five, how many will that be?”
Dazed looks on the faces of the Ten, followed by anxious finger-counting.
“Fifteen,” hazarded Pietro.
“Nix, nine,” shrieked Rafael.
Giuseppi got it right, and to make sure they counted at the top of their lungs, while Eleanor passed him, one by one, the eleven peanuts.
“Now, if he gives Pietro two——” began Eleanor.
“Aw, come off. You say you gif to me,” interrupted Giuseppi. “I wish to keep my peanuts.”
Eleanor gravely accepted the amendment. “All right.” She counted out eleven peanuts, and held them up in her hand. “Now I have eleven peanuts. If I give Pietro two”—she suited the action to the word—“how many have I left?”
More frantic finger-counting, and this time Giovanni got the prize.
Then Rafael and his six unfed comrades burst into angry protests. “You give Pietro two for nix. He never guess right.”