"What did you think of the little test I gave this morning?"
"It was all right," Donald said.
"You both did pretty well; I'm proud of you."
"We had everything right," David pointed out without a flicker of expression.
Elvin couldn't seem to engineer the dialogue as he used to. In that case, this was as appropriate a time as any for the question he had come to ask. He spoke slowly, with a tone of disinterest. "Do either of you know anything about hypnotism?" As a shocker, Elvin realized, it left much to be desired; their faces told him nothing.
"A little," David volunteered.
"We read eight or nine books on it over the weekend," Donald added.
"That's a lot of reading. It must have taken a great deal of time."
"Oh, a couple of hours."
Elvin clenched his fists in futile anger, but he kept his voice steady. "Is anybody else in the tenth grade reading up on hypnotism?"