“What happens to Nannies when they get old?” Bobby asked wonderingly. “What do they do? Where do they go?”

“They go to heaven.” Jean lovingly thumped the green dented hull with her hand. “Just like everybody else.”

“Are Nannies born? Were there always Nannies?” Bobby had begun to conjecture on ultimate cosmic mysteries. “Maybe there was a time before there were Nannies. I wonder what the world was like in the days before Nannies lived.”

“Of course there were always Nannies,” Jean said impatiently. “If there weren’t, where did they come from?”

Bobby couldn’t answer that. He meditated for a time, but presently he became sleepy … he was really too young to solve such problems. His eyelids became heavy and he yawned. Both he and Jean lay on the warm grass by the edge of the lake, watching the sky and the clouds, listening to the wind moving through the grove of cedar trees. Beside them the battered green Nanny rested and recuperated her meager strength.

A little girl came slowly across the field of grass, a pretty child in a blue dress with a bright ribbon in her long dark hair. She was coming toward the lake.

“Look,” Jean said. “There’s Phyllis Casworthy. She has an orange Nanny.”

They watched, interested. “Who ever heard of an orange Nanny?” Bobby said, disgusted. The girl and her Nanny crossed the path a short distance down, and reached the edge of the lake. She and her orange Nanny halted, gazing around at the water and the white sails of toy boats, the mechanical fish.

“Her Nanny is bigger than ours,” Jean observed.

“That’s true,” Bobby admitted. He thumped the green side loyally. “But ours is nicer. Isn’t she?”

Their Nanny did not move. Surprised, he turned to look. The green Nanny stood rigid, taut. Its better eye stalk was far out, staring at the orange Nanny fixedly, unwinkingly.