While three watchmen were guarding an orchard, a thief slipped in and stole some apples. On his way out, he met the three watchmen one after another, and to each in turn he gave half the apples he had and two besides. In this way he managed to escape with one apple. How many apples had he stolen originally?

this is false ^.^ lol

we can set up an equation to find the girls' ages. the equation is         28=0.5x-5+x. (comment if you need me to explain how i got this equation.) so, you add x and 0.5x to get 1.5x and add 5 to each side. your new equation is 33=1.5x. now divide both sides of the equation by 1.5 to get 22=x. because x is mary's age, to find jasmine's age we subtract mary's age from 28. we find that mary is 22 years old and jasmine is 6 years old.

answer is a.

13.268

hope you get it right.