Pulling Multiple Posts Into Homepage

I’m building a custom theme that displays a snip of the most recent blog post on the home page (the blog itself is not the homepage of the site). I’m currently showing just one post, but would like to have the options to show two or more posts. Here’s the current code:

<?php query_posts("posts_per_page=1"); the_post(); ?>

<div class="date_home">Posted <?php the_time('F jS, Y') ?></div>

<h3><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h3>

<?php the_content('Continue Reading →'); ?>

I would have thought that changing

posts_per_page=1

to

posts_per_page=2

would do the the trick, but it’s not working.

Any help appreciated. Thanks!