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'I'm Mrs Ogg,' said Nanny Ogg.
The man looked her up and down.'Oh yes? Can you identify yourself?'
'Certainly. I'd know me anywhere.'


Granny closed her eyes and waved a hand.
There was a yowl from under the kitchen's dresser and a sound of frantic scrabbling. Then, his claws scoring tracks in the floor, Greebo came out backwards, fighting all the way.
'Mind you, a lot of cruelty does the trick as well,' Nanny conceded. 'You've never been much of a cat person, have you, Esme?'


'Oh, you patronise the opera?'
'Lady Esmerelda patronises everything,' said Nanny Ogg stoutly.


She licked her thumb and open the book at page 53. Chocolate Delight with Special Secret Sauce.
Yes, thought Nanny, that would be fun.


MADAM?
Granny looked at her cards, and threw them down.
FOUR QUEENS. HMM. THAT IS VERY HIGH.
Death looked down at his cards, then up into Granny's steady, blue-eyed gaze.
Neither moved for some time.
Then Death laid the hand on the table.
I LOSE, he said. ALL I HAVE IS FOUR ONES.
He looked back into Granny's eyes for a moment. There was a blue glow in the depths of his eye sockets. Maybe, for the merest fraction of a second, barely noticeable even to the closest observer, one winked off.
MISTRESS WEATHERWAX? said Death from the doorway.
'Yes, sir?'
I HAVE TO KNOW. WHAT WOULD HAVE HAPPENED IF I HAD NOT ... LOST?
'At the cards, you mean?'
YES. WHAT WOULD YOU HAVE DONE?
'Well,' she said, 'for a start ... I'd have broken your bloody arm.'


Perdita said: He'll have a vast cave somewhere under the Opera House. There will be hundreds of candles, casting an exciting yet romantic light over the, yes, the lake, and there will be a dinner-table shining with crystal glass and silverware, and of course he will have, yes, a huge organ--
Agnes blushed hotly in the darkness.
--on which, this is to say, he will play in a virtuoso style many operatic classics.
Agnes said: It'll be damp. There will be rats.


Most people in Lancre, as the saying goes, went to bed with the chickens and got up with the cows.
[ footnote: Er. That is to say, they went to bed at the same time as the chickens went to bed, and got up at the same time as the cows got up. Loosely worded saying can really cause misunderstandings.]


The person on the other side was a young woman. Very obviously a young woman. There was no possible way that she could have been mistaken for a young man in any language, especially Braille.
The seamstress with the nice earrings.


The hulking figure seated at the organ turned around and gave her a friendly grin, which was much wider than the average grin. Its owner was covered in red hair and, while short-changed in the leg department, had obviously been first in the queue when the arm counter opened. And had also been given a special free offer of lip.


In the same way that the really rich can never be mad (they're eccentric), so they can also never be rude (they're outspoken and forthright).


"But I don't believe in reincarnation!" he protested.
SQUEAK
And this, Mr Pounder understood with absolute rodent clarity, meant: 'reincarnation believes in you.'
DOR takes charge.


A day ago the future had looked aching and desolate, and now it looked full of surprises and terror and bad things happening to people... if she had anything to do with it anyway.
Granny Weatherwax commits optimism.


Greebo also had a cat's approach to possessions, which was simply that nothing edible had a right to belong to other people.


People who didn't need people needed people around to know that they were the kind of people who didn't need people.


"What sort of person," said Salzella patiently, "sits down and writes a maniacal laugh? And all those exclamation marks, you notice? Five? A sure sign of someone who wears his underpants on his head. Opera can do that to a man."


Violet Frottidge was walking out with young Deviousness Carter, or at least doing something within ninety degrees of walking out.


"There have been... accidents."
"What kind of accidents?"
"The kind of accidents you prefer to call... accidents."


Nanny Ogg found herself embarrassed to even think about this, and this was unusual because embarrassment normally came as naturally to Nanny as altruism comes to a cat.


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