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Show though there they would be full wrong. After determining Nell was in good working order, the two young men had bundled the other one-Dr'Anya's old android-into the airvan and away to a secondhand stall. The good woman had not been sorry to see it go. A clanking, awkward thing of white metal with pillar-like legs and a bullet-shaped head, it had been an ancient monstrosity activated only by voice, and had been bought from a stall of shady reputation in the open market on HighStreet by Dr'Anya's husband, Merchant Armand, who had known nothing of such things. Moreover, he'd bought the android not two weeks before he died-when his mind was at its murkiest. The young Tech had given Dr'Anya an instruction bubble before leaving her alone with Nell, admonishing her to study it most carefully. She had indeed, though it booted but little, for Nell fair confounded her. "By the Saints!" she keyed into the telemm to Janni on Midwinter's Day,' "If night discovers me awake with a dry mouth, Nell appears at my bedside with a glass of cold water, withal, clucking and blinking worriedly the whole time I drink. And indeed," she added, "I must drink." "Pray, mother; water is all to the good and naught to the bad for the system," her daughter replied. "My child," sent Dr'Anya a month later. "Yesternight I was constrained by the good Nell to lie down for a half-hour in the steam room before I journeyed to the monthly cottagers' meeting. "WHAT, PRAY TELL," she sent in capital letters, "AM I TO DO NOW WITH MY RUINED BLUE WOOL 19 |