"I have one," Billy Kasker said hesitantly. "It doesn't exactly have anything to do with our trip through the museum—it's something I ran across in a book—but I don't quite understand it, and I wondered—"
"Go right ahead, Billy. What do you have on your mind?"
"Well, ah, did—did you ever hear of a changeling? I know it's a kind of a silly question but—"
"A changeling?" The instructor frowned.
"I think it comes out of a fairy story or something like that," Billy Kasker said.
"Oh, yes. Now I recall the word." The instructor's face lighted. "It's a story about the fairies taking one child from its crib and substituting another for it. The substituted child was called a changeling. Or perhaps some poor mother, wishing to give her child a better chance, stole the child of a rich mother and put her child in its place. I really don't remember too much about it."
"Thank you, sir. You have explained it very lucidly."
The instructor beamed.
Joe Buckner sniffed. "Asking a question, then telling the instructor he has explained it very clearly when you didn't even ask a sensible question in the first place—that's what I call sucking in! Who ever heard of a changeling?"
The group moved on. They came to the section of the city that had been repaired. The streets had been cleared of the rubble, houses had been rebuilt, and here and there little touches of green grass showed where an attempt to add a touch of beauty had been made.