Isolde was put to work with a vengeance. Each dawn she milked the milch bront Vanderzee kept in the shed behind his store. Each day she washed dishes, cooked, scrubbed floors, waited on customers and unloaded supplies for Vanderzee. Each evening she washed dishes, cooked, scrubbed floors, waited on customers and unloaded supplies for Lanesce, the local tavern keeper to whom Vanderzee sublet her for part time work. But in this subsidiary attempt to get all he could out of her, and in the getting of it, obtain his revenge on her for having deceived him (by the end of the second week, Vanderzee actually had himself believing that it was she, and not Higgens, who had put one over on him), Vanderzee made a mistake. It was a natural enough mistake. Who would have dreamed that an android who screamed or sang gibberish (German was a dead language by 2241 in any but the most esoteric sense, and Vanderzee was generations removed from his native tongue) could attain to any degree of popularity whatsoever in any kind of an establishment whatsoever. But taverns are not ordinary establishments, and frequently events come to pass in them that could never have come to pass elsewhere. Isolde became popular. She became so popular, in fact, that Lanesce's business doubled. Tripled. * * * * * There was nothing unprecedented about her popularity. Idiot waitresses have always enjoyed an exalted place in taverns. They make ideal patsies for jokes, for one thing, and are generally responsive to gooses, for another. While Isolde was neither an idiot nor responsive to gooses, the sounds she uttered whenever anyone said something to her, obscene or otherwise, were suggestive enough of idiot rantings to the ear of the average patron, for her to be classified as an idiot; and while she may not have been responsive to gooses, neither was she on her guard against them, taking them in her stride like everything else. None of which bears directly on the nature of Vanderzee's mistake. What does bear directly upon it is the fact that the variety of men who frequent bars, is infinite. Sooner or later someone had to come along who would recognize Isolde, either from her recitative or from her arias, or from her appearance, for what she was--or what she once had been. And presently someone did. * * * * *