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you shan’t see Robbie for a whole week.”
    The girl’s eyes fell, “All right! But Cinderella is his favorite story and I didn’t finish it. – And he likes it so much.”
    The robot left with a disconsolate step and Gloria choked back a sob.
     
    George Weston was comfortable. It was a habit of his to be comfortable on Sunday afternoons. A good, hearty dinner below the hatches; a nice, soft, dilapidated couch on which to sprawl; a copy of the Times; slippered feet and shirtless chest; how could anyone help but be comfortable?
    He wasn’t pleased, therefore, when his wife walked in. After ten years of married life, be still was so unutterably foolish as to love her, and there was no question that he was always glad to see her – still Sunday afternoons just after dinner were sacred to him and his idea of solid comfort was to be left in utter solitude for two or three hours. Consequently, he fixed his eye firmly upon the latest reports of the Lefebre-Yoshida expedition to Mars (this one was to take off from Lunar Base and might actually succeed) and pretended she wasn’t there.
    Mrs. Weston waited patiently for two minutes, then impatiently for two more, and finally broke the silence.
    “George!”
    “Hmpph?”
    “George, I say! Will you put down that paper and look at me?”
    The paper rustled to the floor and Weston turned a weary face toward his wife, “What is it, dear?”
    “You know what it is, George. It’s Gloria and that terrible machine.”
    “What terrible machine?”
    “Now don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about. It’s that robot Gloria calls Robbie. He doesn’t leave her for a moment.”
    “Well, why should he? He’s not supposed to. And he certainly isn’t a terrible machine. He’s the best darn robot money can buy and I’m damned sure he set me back half a year’s income. He’s worth it, though – darn sight cleverer than half my office staff.”
     
    He made a move to pick up the paper again, but his wife was quicker and snatched it away.
    “You listen to me, George. I won’t have my daughter entrusted to a machine – and I don’t care how clever it is. It has no soul, and no one knows what it may be thinking. A child just isn’t made to be guarded by a thing of metal.”
    Weston frowned, “When did you decide this? He’s been with Gloria two years now and I haven’t seen you worry till now.”
    “It was different at first. It was a novelty; it took a load off me, and – and it was a fashionable thing to do. But now I don’t know. The neighbors-”
    “Well, what have the neighbors to do with it? Now, look. A robot is infinitely more to be trusted than a human nursemaid. Robbie was constructed for only one purpose really – to be the companion of a little child. His entire ‘mentality’ has been created for the purpose. He just can’t help being faithful and loving and kind. He’s a machine-made so. That’s more than you can say for humans.”
    “But something might go wrong. Some-some-” Mrs. Weston was a bit hazy about the insides of a robot, “some little jigger will come loose and the awful thing will go berserk and-and-” She couldn’t bring herself to complete the quite obvious thought.
    “Nonsense,” Weston denied, with an involuntary nervous shiver. “That’s completely ridiculous. We had a long discussion at the time we bought Robbie about the First Law of Robotics. You know that it is impossible for a robot to harm a human being; that long before enough can go wrong to alter that First Law, a robot would be completely inoperable. It’s a mathematical impossibility. Besides I have an engineer from U. S. Robots here twice a year to give the poor gadget a complete overhaul. Why, there’s no more chance of any thing at all going wrong with Robbie than there is of you or I suddenly going loony – considerably less, in fact. Besides, how are you going to take him away from Gloria?”
    He made another futile stab at the paper