(Q).
Rain, the young man is thinking. Of course it would be raining. Not a heavy, cleansing rain that leaves the streets steaming and the neatly sculptured yards lush and fragrant. This is a gray drizzling rain. A rain that makes him think of places like England and Scotland as they appear in those disturbing late night films on cable, the ones in black and white that weren't particularly memorable when they were made and are even less so now. Still, it rains and the air is cool. All he has to shelter him is a think nylon jacket. The jacket is soaked. It feels both chilly and coarse against his skin. His hair hangs in flat and sodden wings, falling into his eyes. It's long in the back, almost to his shoulders, and he thinks that the cars that pass him on the street, the occupants of those cars, might look at him and see only that he is wet and not that he is dirty as well. Can they tell that his hair has been unwashed for days? That his clothes are the same ones he's worn for more than a week? It doesn't matter. He's invisible to them as soon as they pass, taking any assumptions they might make with them. They might just mistake him for one of those hoity-toity college kids, one of those clean limbed and beaming have's who has happened to find himself caught out without his umbrella. He makes a desultory attempt to straighten his shoulders, to lift his eyes from the buckled sidewalk. To look like he might have a purpose or a destination. It doesn't help. He has become the day. He has internalized the environment. He did that years ago, in fact. That's all I can do. Not his words, of course, but he understands them. He is intimately acquainted with his limitations. Question: The rain storm in the story most likely lasted: Options: - A couple of weeks - not enough information - Several hours - Many days === The correct answer is
(A).
Several hours

(Q).
When Patch finally found his way out of the seed-pod, Toro was gone, and there were rats all around him. Some hid beneath the huge black seed-pods, some scuttled in the shadows of the nearby mountain. Patch knew from their smells there were at least a dozen of them. There was another smell too, mixed with that of the rats. The very same unsavory squirrel-smell he had detected in Silver's abandoned drey. "What do you want?" Patch asked, from his perch atop the mound of seed-pods. He was concerned but not yet frightened. Rats and squirrels were neither friends nor enemies. Squirrels were bigger and stronger, but rats were far more numerous. There were legends of long-ago wars between the two species, but no squirrel Patch knew had ever been attacked by rats. Squirrels lived aboveground, in the sun; rats frequented the night and the dark underworld. Of course, squirrels found rats disgusting and disagreeable -- but so did all other animals. An unusually large rat climbed up to the top of a seed-pod. It was almost as big as Patch himself. Rats usually avoided light, but this one stood unafraid beneath the sun, and demanded: "Who are you?" "I am Patch son of Silver, of the Seeker clan, of the Treetops tribe, of the Center Kingdom," Patch said. "Who are you that asks?" "I am Snout," the rat replied. "Why are you here?" "I came to look for food." "This is our food. These mountains are ours." "Your food?" Patch asked, bewildered. There was no ownership of food in the Center Kingdom, not until it had actually been eaten. "That's ridiculous. It's food. It belongs to whoever finds it first." "Then you belong to us," Snout hissed. "Because we are the rats who will suck the marrow from your broken bones." Question: Why do squirrels dislike rats? Options: - Legends of wars - not enough information - Rats can suck the marrow from the broken bones - All animals found rats disgusting === The correct answer is
(A).
All animals found rats disgusting

(Q).
I was once distinctly unsettled by a utility man who called to read the gas meter. We were living in an old house at the time and I was home alone with the youngest child (who was around six months old), balanced on my hip as I opened the door. The visitor looked genuine, dressed in the expected uniform. He was around 6.3 and probably not the most tidily presented utility man I'd met, but I believed him to be genuine and willingly invited him in out of the foul weather. It was pouring down outside, a freezing cold winter's day. As I closed the door I remembered that I should have asked to see his company I.D. , so as I opened the meter cupboard and switched on the light, I politely said, 'Oops, I should have asked to see your I.D. if you don't mind?. He stood there in front of the door and made no move to produce his card or do anything in fact. He just glared down at me in the most menacing way and said in a very sinister voice 'Isn't it a little bit late for that now? What are you going to do if I tell you I don't have it?'. There was an embarrassed silence. He continued to stare down at me without making a move for what seemed like minutes but was probably seconds. He didn't produce his I.D., instead he almost grudgingly read the meter as I looked on and then he swiftly left without saying goodbye. I closed the door and locked it, and then took a while to get my pulse rate back to normal and to realise I'd just learned a very big lesson. Such a creepy individual, I didn't make that mistake again. Question: How long did the utility man take to read the gas meter? Options: - not enough information - 15 minutes. - 1 hour. - 2 hour. === The correct answer is
(A).
15 minutes.