Chapter Ten
It was very late on Thursday night. Liz read her science textbook while I worked on my history assignment. We sat at the desks in our room with the lamps on.
“Liz,” I said, “can you give me five minutes of your valuable time?”
She laughed. “Roman numerals?”
“Yes.”
She put a bookmarker in her science book. “It’s really very simple.” She opened her tablet to a blank page. “‘I’ is one, ‘V’ is five, ‘X’ is ten, ‘L’ is fifty, ‘C’ is one hundred, ‘D’ is five hundred, and ‘M’ is one thousand. All the other numbers are made up of these six letters. Two is ‘II’, three is ‘III,’ then four is ‘IV’. The ‘I’ on the left side of ‘V’ means one less than five, then six is ‘V’ with an ‘I’ on the right side, or five plus one, ‘VI,’ seven is ‘VII,’ eight is ‘VIII.’ Nine is ten minus one, or
