Aww. Good.

A little less than an hour later, there's a knock at the door, and Marisel is visible through the window set into it.

Rhoda looks up briefly, and then back to Daisy, not entirely sure what to do.

Daisy gets up to open the door. (This involves a little bit of detangling herself from Rhoda, but she has practice at it by now.) Marisel has brought them a cart with a few dozen books - "Does this look okay?"

Daisy looks them over: they're mostly engineering books - she's brought most of the kids' section over, plus a few introductory adults' books - but with a few other science books, a couple novels, and a poetry compilation added to the end. "Yes, that's just what we wanted. Thank you."

"Okay," Marisel nods. "You can bring the cart up when you're ready to go."

"Mmhmm, thank you." Daisy wheels it in.

"Thank you," Rhoda adds, managing a smile at Marisel, before moving to look over the books in curiosity.

Marisel smiles back, nods to Daisy, and goes, and Daisy shuts the door and returns to her seat; the cart is close enough for Rhoda to look at it from her lap, if she'd like to.

She'll do that then! She pauses before getting too involved. "How many can I take?" she asks.

"We'll be able to fit at least three or four on the speeder, I think - if you want to see if we can fit a few more, we can bring them back before we leave if they don't fit. And I can pick up the rest of them next time I'm here."

Rhoda nods, and goes back to contemplating. The poetry book gets picked out immediately. The adult books probably have more in depth information, and one of those joins the poetry book, but she can possibly read the kids version on her own, so one of those also joins, both after careful perusal. She considers, and eventually chooses one of the novels as well.

"We might be able to fit more, if you want to try."

She hums thoughtfully, selects another couple of the science books. "That'll be fine." (There's perhaps a slight sense of 'for now' in that statement.)

"All right."

She takes one of the remaining books from the cart and settles in to read.

And Rhoda will settle close enough to see the pages again, smiling slightly, obviously content.

This one's a little longer, and Daisy takes her time with it, pausing to go over the diagrams and occasionally referring back to earlier sections of the book. When she's done, the sun is low in the sky.

Rhoda is attentive, and asks the occasional question. She looks hopefully to Daisy when she realises the sun is low - she's a lot calmer than she was earlier, but she does still want to go home.

Daisy notices, of course. "Ready?"

She nods. "Yes. I- if you are?"

"About, yes. We should get something for you to eat for dinner, and I have a friend I want to visit, but neither of those should take very long."

She nods. "Okay," she agrees.

"Is another sandwich okay?"

She nods. "That's fine, thank you."

"All right. We can go order that, and then we can visit Nine and go back to pick it up before we go, so you don't have to wait in the crowd."

It is indeed crowded at the sandwich shop, but there's a second droid there now to take orders, and they don't have to stay long.

Rhoda continues to stay close to Daisy, but stays mostly calm, even if she's still visibly relieved when they leave the crowded shop.

And then they can go to visit Nine - a few blocks down, and then onto a side street, and Daisy pauses. "I need you to stay close to me, okay? Nine won't want to hurt you, but he's a guard droid, and he's under orders; if you get too close to his store, he might have to."

She gives a sharp nod of understanding and agreement. It's not like she's drifting very far from Daisy anyway.

"Okay." Quick hug, and then down the block and around another corner, where a tall droid with broad shoulders, a narrow waist, and his head set deeply between his shoulders is standing outside one of the shops. Daisy stops a little ways down and calls to him: "Nine?"

    "Daisy?" He turns to look. "I wasn't expecting you."

She doesn't move any closer. "Mmhmm. We're only in town for the day, and we're about to leave, but I wanted to introduce you to Rhoda, the guest I told you about."

    "Oh," he sounds pleased, though it's much more muted than Daisy usually does. "You can bring her over, I'm not at my post yet."

"All right." She sounds pleased, too, and moves to a more conversational distance.