The hay truck rumbled into the yard. "Delivery!" called Spike.

"Let's count the bales," said Little Thunder. He started with single bales. "One, two, three... nine!"

He rolled one more bale over. "Ten!"

"When we have ten single bales," said Suzy, "we tie them into one row of ten."

Little Thunder pushed the bales together. "Ten ones make one ten!"

They kept stacking. Soon there were ten rows of ten.

"Ten tens," said Spike. "That's one hundred. That makes a whole truckload!"

Rome the cow wandered over. "How many bales do we have altogether?"

Little Thunder counted. "Two truckloads, three rows and four single bales."

"So the number is two hundred and thirty-four," said Suzy. "The two means two hundreds. The three means three tens. The four means four ones."

"Every digit has its own job," said Spike.

Rome munched a bit of hay from a single bale. "Oops. Now it's two hundred and thirty-three!"

Everyone laughed, even Little Thunder.