"Oh."
"And he's a burro, not a horse."
"Well what do you know about that? Can you imagine me calling him a
horse? Will you pardon me?"
* * * * *
Biddy took a couple of steps toward the man, then stopped uncertainly.
"I--are you--?"
"Why don't you come over here and sit down with me?"
"Is--is it all right?"
"I don't know why not."
"I thought maybe you were from the Eastern Bloc." That was foolish of
course. Nobody as nice as this man could be from the horrid East.
"No. I'm not from there." The man's clear gray eyes were on Biddy's
brace as she approached.
"Then where are you from?"
That seemed to take a little thought. "Well, let's say I'm from the sky
bloc."
"There _is_ a sky bloc?"
"Oh, yes. A very big, big one. After all, the sky is very big isn't it?"
"Yes, that's right. But what are you doing here?"
That was obviously an even tougher one to answer. "Oh, I've got a
little job to do."
"You aren't going to blow up our space station, are you?"
"No, that is, I hope not."
"You mean that maybe you will?"
* * * * *
The man's smile said everything was going to be all right and because
little girls understood smiles and believed them even more than words,
it wasn't necessary to go into the subject any further. "What's your
name?"
The man said some funny word that Biddy couldn't understand. She
laughed and he laughed too and then said, "Why don't you call me Joe?
That's a nice easy name to remember."
"It's a nice name. Do you live in the cave there where the shiny box
is?"