‘Yes, Beanie, she says he’s sort of different. He’s like a adding machine.’
‘What’s a adding machine?’
Janie exaggerated the supreme patience that her nursery school teacher had affected. ‘It’s a thing you push buttons and it gives you the right answer.’
Lone shook his head.
Janie essayed, ‘Well, if you have three cents and four cents and five cents and seven cents and eight cents—how many you got altogether?’
Lone shrugged hopelessly.
‘Well if you have a adding machine, you push a button for two and a button for three and a button for all the other ones and then you pull a handle, the machine tells you how many you got altogether. And it’s always right.’
Lone sorted all this out slowly and finally nodded. Then he waved towards the orange crate that was now Baby’s bassinet, and the twins hanging spellbound over him. ‘He got no buttons you push.’
‘That was just a finger of speech,’ Janie said loftily. ‘Look, you tell Baby something, and then you tell him something else. He will put the somethings together and tell you what they come out to, just like the adding machine does with one and two and—‘
‘All right, but what kind of somethings?’