Российское респираторное общество 2 страница

“That’s a harp he’s playing, Nobby,” said one of them, after watching Imp for a while.

“Lyre.”

“No, it’s the honest truth, I’m—” The fat guard frowned and looked down.

“You’ve just been waiting all your life to say that, ain’t you, Nobby,” he said. “I bet you was born hoping that one day someone’d say “That’s a harp” so you could say “lyre", on account of it being a pun or play on words. Well, har har.”

Imp stopped playing. It was impossible to continue, in the circumstances.

“It is a harp, actualllly,” he said. “I won it in—”

“Ah, you’re from Llamedos, right?” said the fat guard. “I can tell by your accent. Very musical people, the Llamedese.”

“Sounds like garglin' with gravel to me,” said the one identified as Nobby. “You got a licence, mate?”

“Llicence?” said Imp.

“Very hot on licences, the Guild of Musicians,” said Nobby. “They catch you playing music without a licence, they take your instrument and they shove—”

“Now, now,” said the other watchman. “Don’t go scaring the boy.”

“Let’s just say it’s not much fun if you’re a piccolo player,” said Nobby.

“But surelly music is as free as the air and the sky, see,” said Imp.

“Not round here it’s not. Just a word to the wise, friend,” said Nobby.

“I never ever heard of a Guilld of Musicians,” said Imp.

“It’s in Tin Lid Alley,” said Nobby. “You want to be a musician, you got to join the Guild.”

Imp had been brought up to obey the rules. The Llamedese were very law-abiding.

“I shallll go there directlly,” he said.

The guards watched him go.

“He’s wearing a nightdress,” said Corporal Nobbs.

“Bardic robe, Nobby,” said Sergeant Colon. The guards strolled onwards. “Very bardic, the Llamedese.”

“How long d'you give him, sarge?”

Colon waved a hand in the flat rocking motion of someone hazarding an informed guess.

“Two, three days,” he said.

They rounded the bulk of Unseen University and ambled along The Backs, a dusty little street that saw little traffic or passing trade and was therefore much favoured by the Watch as a place to lurk and have a smoke and explore the realms of the mind.

“You know salmon, sarge,” said Nobby.

“It is a fish of which I am aware, yes.”

“You know they sell kind of slices of it in tins...”

“So I am given to understand, yes.”

“Weell... how come all the tins are the same size? Salmon gets thinner at both ends.”

“Interesting point, Nobby. I think—”

The watchman stopped, and stared across the street. Corporal Nobbs followed his gaze.

“That shop,” said Sergeant Colon. “That shop there... was it there yesterday?”

Nobby looked at the peeling paint, the little grime-encrusted window, the rickety door.

“Course,” he said. “It’s always been there. Been there years. ”

Colon crossed the street and rubbed at the grime. There were dark shapes vaguely visible in the gloom.

“Yeah, right,” he mumbled. “It’s just that... I mean... was it there for years yesterday?”

“You ail right, sarge?”

“Let’s go, Nobby,” said the sergeant, walking away as fast as he could.

“Where, sarge?”

“Anywhere not here.”

In the dark mounds of merchandise, something felt their departure.

Imp had already admired the Guild buildings—the majestic frontage of the Assassins’ Guild, the splendid columns of the Thieves’ Guild, the smoking yet still impressive hole where the Alchemists’ Guild had been up until yesterday. And it was therefore disappointing to find that the Guild of Musicians, when he eventually located it, wasn’t even a building. It was just a couple of poky rooms above a barber shop.

He sat in the brown-walled waiting room, and waited. There was a sign on the wall opposite. It said “For Your Comforte And Convenience YOU WILL NOT SMOKE”. Imp had never smoked in his life. Everything in Llamedos was too soggy to smoke. But he suddenly felt inclined to try.

The room’s only other occupants were a troll and a dwarf. He was not at ease in their company. They kept looking at him.

Finally the dwarf said, “Are you elvish?”

“Me? No!”

“You look a bit elvish around the hair.”

“Not ellvish at allll. Honestlly.”

“Where you from?” said the troll.

“Llamedos,” said Imp. He shut his eyes. He knew what trolls and dwarfs traditionally did to people suspected of being elves. The Guild of Musicians could take lessons.

“What dat you got dere?” said the troll. It had two large squares of darkish glass in front of its eyes, supported by wire frames hooked around its ears.

“It’s a harp, see.”

“Dat what you play?”

“Yes.”

“You a druid, den?”

“No!”

There was silence again as the troll marshalled its thoughts.

“You look like a druid in dat nightie,” it rumbled, after a while.

The dwarf on the other side of Imp began to snigger.

Trolls disliked druids, too. Any sapient species which spends a lot of time in a stationary, rock-like pose objects to any other species which drags it sixty miles on rollers and buries it up to its knees in a circle. It tends to feel it has cause for disgruntlement.

“Everyone dresses like this in Llamedos, see,” said Imp. “But I’m a bard! I’m not a druid. I hate rocks!”

“Whoops,” said the dwarf quietly.

The troll looked Imp up and down, slowly and deliberately. Then it said, without any particular trace of menace, “You not long in dis town?”

“Just arrived,” said Imp. I won’t even reach the door, he thought. I’m going to be mashed into a pullp.

“Here is some free advice what you should know. It is free advice I am giving you gratis for nothing. In dis town, “rock” is a word for troll. A bad word for troll used by stupid humans. You call a troll a rock, you got to be prepared to spend some time looking for your head. Especially if you looks a bit elvish around de ears. Dis is free advice “cos you are a bard and maker of music, like me.”

“Right! Thank you! Yes!” said Imp, awash with relief.

He grabbed his harp and played a few notes. That seemed to lighten the atmosphere a bit. Everyone knew elves had never been able to play music.

“Lias Bluestone,” said the troll, extending something massive with fingers on it.

“Imp y Celyn,” said Imp. “Nothing to do with moving rocks around at allll in any way!”

A smaller, more knobbly hand was thrust at Imp from another direction. His gaze travelled up its associated arm, which was the property of the dwarf. He was small, even for a dwarf. A large bronze horn lay across his knees.

“Glod Glodsson,” said the dwarf. “You just play the harp?”

“Anything with strings on it,” said Imp. “But the harp is the queen of instruments, see.”

“I can blow anything,” said Glod.

“Realllly?” said Imp. He sought for some polite comment. “That must make you very popullar.”

The troll heaved a big leather sack off the floor.

“Dis is what I play,” he said. A number of large round rocks tumbled out on to the floor. Lias picked one up and flicked it with a finger. It went bam.

“Music made from rocks?” said Imp. “What do you callll it?”

“We call it Ggroohauga,” said Lias, “which means, music made from rocks.”

The rocks were all of different sizes, carefully tuned here and there by small nicks carved out of the stone.

“May I?” said Imp.

“Be my guest.”

Imp selected a small rock and flicked it with his finger. It went bop. A smaller one went bing.

“What do you do with them?” he said.

“I bang them together.”

“And then what?”

“What do you mean, “And then what?"”

“What do you do after you’ve banged them together?”

“I bang them together again,” said Lias, one of nature’s drummers.

The door to the inner room opened and a man with a pointed nose peered around it.

“You lot together?” he snapped.

There was indeed a river, according to legend, one drop of which would rob a man of his memory.

Many people assumed that this was the river Ankh, whose waters can be drunk or even cut up and chewed. A drink from the Ankh would quite probably rob a man of his memory, or at least cause things to happen to him that he would on no account wish to recall.

In fact there was another river that would do the trick. There was, of course, a snag. No-one knows where it is, because they’re always pretty thirsty when they find it.

Death turned his attention elsewhere.

“Seventy-five dollllars?” said Imp. “Just to pllay music?”

“That’s twenty-five dollars registration fee, twenty per cent of fees, and fifteen dollars voluntary compulsory annual subscription to the Pension Fund,” said Mr Clete, secretary of the Guild.

“But we haven’t got that much money!”

The man gave a shrug which indicated that, although the world did indeed have many problems, this was one of them that was not his.

“But maybe we shallll be ablle to pay when we’ve earned some,” said Imp weakly. “If you could just, you know, llet us have a week or two—”

“Can’t let you play anywhere without you being members of the Guild,” said Mr Clete.

“But we can’t be members of the Guild until we’ve played,” said Glod.

“That’s right,” said Mr Clete cheerfully. “Hat. Hat. Hat.”

It was a strange laugh, totally mirthless and vaguely birdlike. It was very much like its owner, who was what you would get if you extracted fossilized genetic material from something in amber and then gave it a suit.

Lord Vetinari had encouraged the growth of the Guilds. They were the big wheels on which the clockwork of a well-regulated city ran. A drop of oil here... a spoke inserted there, of course... and by and large it all worked.

And gave rise, in the same way that compost gives rise to worms, to Mr Clete. He was not, by the standard definitions, a bad man; in the same way a plague-bearing rat is not, from a dispassionate point of view, a bad animal.

Mr Clete worked hard for the benefit of his fellow men. He devoted his life to it. For there are many things in the world that need doing that people don’t want to do and were grateful to Mr Clete for doing for them. Keeping minutes, for example. Making sure the membership roll was quite up to date. Filing. Organizing.

He’d worked hard on behalf of the Thieves’ Guild, although he hadn’t been a thief, at least in the sense normally meant. Then there’d been a rather more senior vacancy in the Fools’ Guild, and Mr Clete was no fool. And finally there had been the secretaryship of the Musicians.

Technically, he should have been a musician. So he bought a comb and paper. Since up until that time the Guild had been run by real musicians, and therefore the membership roll was unrolled and hardly anyone had paid any dues lately and the organization owed several thousand dollars to Chrysoprase the troll at punitive interest, he didn’t even have to audition.

When Mr Clete had opened the first of the unkempt ledgers and looked at the unorganized mess, he had felt a deep and wonderful feeling. Since then, he’d never looked back. He had spent a long time looking down. And although the Guild had a president and council, it also had Mr Clete, who took the minutes and made sure things ran smoothly and smiled very quietly to himself. It is a strange but reliable fact that whenever men throw off the yoke of tyrants and set out to rule themselves there emerges, like a mushroom after rain, Mr Clete.

Hat. Hat. Hat. Mr Clete laughed at things in inverse proportion to the actual humour of the situation.

“But that’s nonsense!”

“Welcome to the wonderful world of the Guild economy,” said Mr Clete. “Hat. Hat. Hat.”

“What happens if we pllay without belonging to the Guilld, then?” said Imp. “Do you confiscate our instruments?”

“To start with,” said the president. “And then we sort of give them back to you. Hat. Hat. Hat. Incidentally... you’re not elvish, are you?”

“Seventy-five dollars is criminall,” said Imp, as they plodded along the evening streets.

“Worse than criminal,” said Glod. “I hear the Thieves’ Guild just charges a percentage.”

“And dey give you a proper Guild membership and everything,” Lias rumbled. “Even a pension. And dey have a day trip to Quirm and a picnic every year.”

“Music should be free,” said Imp.

“So what we going to do now?” said Lias.

“Anyone got any money?” said Glod.

“Got a dollar,” said Lias.

“Got some pennies,” said Imp.

“Then we’re going to have a decent meal,” said Glod. “Right here.”

He pointed up at a sign.

“Gimlet’s Hole Food?” said Lias. “Gimlet? Sounds dwarfish. Vermincelli and stuff?”

“Now he’s doing troll food too,” said Glod. “Decided to put aside ethnic differences in the cause of making more money. Five types of coal, seven types of coke and ash, sediments to make you dribble. You’ll like it.”

“Dwarf bread too?” said Imp.

“You like dwarf bread?” said Glod.

“Llove it; said Imp.

“What, proper dwarf bread?” said Glod. “You sure?”

“Yes. It’s nice and crunchy, see.”

Glod shrugged.

“That proves it,” he said. “No-one who likes dwarf bread can be elvish.”

The place was almost empty. A dwarf in an apron that came up to its armpits watched them over the top of the counter. “You do fried rat?” said Glod.

“Best damn fried rat in the city,” said Gimlet.

“OK. Give me four fried rats.”

“And some dwarf bread,” said Imp.

“And some coke,” said Lias patiently.

“You mean rat heads or rat legs?”

“No. Four fried rats.”

“And some coke.”

“You want ketchup on those rats?”

“No.”

“You sure?”

“No ketchup.”

“And some coke.”

“And two hard-boilled eggs,” said Imp.

The others gave him an odd look.

“Wellll? I just like hard-boilled eggs,” he said.

“And some coke.”

“And two hard-boiled eggs.”

“And some coke.”

“Seventy-five dollars,” said Glod, as they sat down. “What’s three times seventy-five dollars?”

“Many dollars,” said Lias.

“More than two hundred dollllars,” said Imp.

“I don’t think I’ve even seen two hundred dollars,” said Glod. “Not while I’ve been awake.”

“We raise money?” said Lias. “We can’t raise money by being musicians,” said Imp. “It’s the Guild Raw. If they catch you, they take your instrument and shove—” He stopped. “Llet’s just say it’s not much fun for the piccollo pllayer,” he added from memory.

“I shouldn’t think the trombonist is very happy either,” said Glod, putting some pepper on his rat.

“I can’t go back home now,” said Imp. “I said I’d... I can’t go back home yet. Even if I could, I’d have to raise monolliths llike my brothers. Allll they care about is stone circlles.”

“If I go back home now,” said Lias, “I’ll be clubbing druids.”

They both, very carefully, sidled a little further away from each other.

“Then we play somewhere where the Guild won’t find us,” said Glod cheerfully. “We find a club somewhere—”

“Got a club,” said Lias, proudly. “Got a nail in it.”

“I mean a night club,” said Glod.

“Still got a nail in it at night.”

“I happen to know,” said Glod, abandoning that line of conversation, “that there’s a lot of places in the city that don’t like paying Guild rates. We could do a few gigs and raise the money with no trouble.”

“Allll three of us together?” said Imp.

“Sure.”

“But we pllay dwarf music and human music and trollll music,” said Imp. “I’m not sure they’llll go together. I mean, dwarfs llisten to dwarf music, humans llisten to human music, trolllls Ilisten to trollll music. What do we get if we mix it allll together? It’d be dreadfull.”

“We’re getting along OK,” said Lias, getting up and fetching the salt from the counter.

“We’re musicians,” said Glod. “It’s not the same with real people.”

“Yeah, right,” said the troll.

Lias sat down.

There was a cracking noise.

Lias stood up.

“Oh,” he said.

Imp reached over. Slowly and with great care he picked the remains of his harp off the bench.

“Oh,” said Lias.

A string curled back with a sad little sound.

It was like watching the death of a kitten.

“I won that at the Eisteddfod,” said Imp.

“Could you glue it back together?” said Glod, eventually.

Imp shook his head.

“There’s no-one left in Llamedos who knows how, see.”

“Yes, but in the Street of Cunning Artificers—”

“I’m real sorry. I mean real sorry, I don’t know how it got dere.”

“It wasn’t your faullt.”

Imp tried, ineffectually, to fit a couple of pieces together. But you couldn’t repair a musical instrument. He remembered the old bards saying that. They had a soul. All instruments had a soul. If they were broken, the soul of them escaped, flew away like a bird. What was put together again was just a thing, a mere assemblage of wood and wire. It would play, it might even deceive the casual listener, but... You might as well push someone over a cliff and then stitch them together and expect them to come alive.

“Um... maybe we could get you another one, then?” said Glod. “There’s... a nice little music shop in The Backs—”

He stopped. Of course there was a nice little music shop in The Backs. It had always been there.

“In The Backs,” he repeated, just to make sure. “Bound to get one there. In The Backs. Yes. Been there years.”

“Not one of these,” said Imp. “Before a craftsman even touches the wood he has to spend two weeks sitting wrapped in a bullllock hide in a cave behind a waterfallll.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. It’s traditionall. He has to get his mind pure of allll distractions.”

“There’s bound to be something else, though,” said Glod. “We’ll buy something. You can’t be a musician without an instrument.”

“I haven’t got any money,” said Imp.

Glod slapped him on the back. “That doesn’t matter,” he said. “You’ve got friends! We’ll help you! Least we can do.”

“But we allll spent everything we had on this meall. There’s no more money,” said Imp.

“That’s a negative way of looking at it,” said Glod.

“Wellll, yes. We haven’t got any, see?”

“I’ll sort out something,” said Glod. “I’m a dwarf. We know about money. Knowing about money is practically my middle name.”

“That’s a long middle name.”

It was almost dark when they reached the shop, which was right opposite the high walls of Unseen University. It looked the kind of musical instrument emporium which doubles as a pawnshop, since every musician has at some time in his life to hand over his instrument if he wants to eat and sleep indoors.

“You ever bought anything in here?” said Lias.

“No... not that I remember,” said Glod.

“It shut,” said Lias.

Glod hammered on the door. After a while it opened a crack, just enough to reveal a thin slice of face belonging to an old woman.

“We want to buy an instrument, ma'am,” said Imp.

One eye and a slice of mouth looked him up and down.

“You human?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“All right, then.”

The shop was lit by a couple of candles. The old woman retired to the safety of the counter, where she watched them very carefully for any signs of murdering her in her bed.

The trio moved carefully amongst the merchandise. It seemed that the shop had accumulated its stock from unclaimed pledges over the centuries. Musicians were often short of money; it was one definition of a musician. There were battle horns. There were lutes. There were drums.

“This is junk,” said Imp under his breath.

Glod blew the dust off a crumhorn and put it to his lips, achieving a sound like the ghost of a refried bean.

“I reckon there’s a dead mouse in here,” he said, peering into the depths.

“It was all right before you blew it,” snapped the old woman.

There was an avalanche of cymbals from the other end of the shop.

“Sorry,” Lias called out.

Glod opened the lid of an instrument that was entirely unfamiliar to Imp. It revealed a row of keys; Glod ran his stumpy fingers over them, producing a sequence of sad, tinny notes.

“What is it?” whispered Imp.

“A virginal,” said the dwarf.

“Any good to us?”

“Shouldn’t think so.”

Imp straightened up. He felt that he was being watched. The old lady was watching, but there was something else...

“It’s no use. There’s nothing here,” he said loudly.

“Hey, what was that?” said Glod.

“I said there’s—”

“I heard something.”

“What?”

“There it is again.”

There was a series of crashes and thumps behind them as Lias liberated a double-bass from a drift of old music-stands and tried to blow down the sharp bit.

“There was a funny sound when you spoke,” said Glod. “Say something.”

Imp hesitated, as people do when, after having used a language all their lives, they’re told to “say something”.

“Imp?” he said.

WHUM-Whum-whum.

“It came from—”

WHAA-Whaa-whaa.

Glod lifted aside a pile of ancient sheet-music. There was a musical graveyard behind it, including a skinless drum, a set of Lancre bagpipes without the pipes and a single maraca, possibly for use by a Zen flamenco dancer.

And something else.

The dwarf pulled it out. It looked, vaguely, like a guitar carved out of a piece of ancient wood by a blunt stone chisel. Although dwarfs did not, as a rule, play stringed instruments, Glod knew a guitar when he saw one. They were supposed to be shaped like a woman, but this was only the case if you thought women had no legs, a long neck and too many ears.

“Imp?” he said.

“Yes?”

Whauauaum. The sound had a saw-edged, urgent fringe to it. There were twelve strings, but the body of the instrument was solid wood, not at all hollow it was more or less just a shape to hold the strings.

“It resonated to your voice,” said Glod.

“How can-?”

Whaum-wha.

Glod clamped his hand over the strings, and beckoned the other two closer.

“We’re right by the University here,” he whispered. “Magic leaks out. It’s a well-known fact. Or maybe some wizard pawned it. Don’t look a gift rat in the mouth. Can you play a guitar?”

Imp went pale.

“You mean like... follk music?”

He took the instrument. Folk music was not approved of in Llamedos, and the singing of it was rigorously discouraged; it was felt that anyone espying a fair young maiden one morning in May was entitled to take whatever steps they considered appropriate without someone writing it down. Guitars were frowned upon as being, well... too easy.

Imp struck a chord. It created a sound quite unlike anything he’d heard before—there were resonances and odd echoes that seemed to run and hide among the instrumental debris and pick up additional harmonics and then bounce back again. It made his spine itch. But you couldn’t be even the worst musician in the world without some kind of instrument...

“Right,” said Glod.

He turned to the old woman.

“You don’t call this a music instrument, do you?” he demanded. “Look at it, half of it’s not even there.”

“Glod, I don’t think—” Imp began. Under his hand the strings trembled.

The old woman looked at the thing.

“Ten dollars,” she said.

“Ten dollars? Ten dollars?” said Glod. “It’s not worth two dollars!”

“That’s right,” said the old woman. She brightened up a bit in a nasty way, as if looking forward to a battle in which no expense would be spared.

“And it’s ancient,” said Glod.

“Antique.”

“Would you listen to that tone? It’s ruined.”

“Mellow. You don’t get craftsmanship like that these days.”

“Only because we’ve learned from experience!”

Imp looked at the thing again. The strings resonated by themselves. They had a blue tint to them and a slightly fuzzy look, as though they never quite stopped vibrating.

He lifted it close to his mouth and whispered, “Imp.” The strings hummed.

Now he noticed the chalk mark. It was almost faded. And all it was was a mark. Just a stroke of the chalk...

Glod was in full flow. Dwarfs were said to be the keenest of financial negotiators, second only in acumen and effrontery to little old ladies. Imp tried to pay attention to what was going on.

“Right, then,” Glod was saying, “it’s a deal, yes?”

“A deal,” said the little old lady. “And don’t go spitting on your hand before we shake, that sort of thing’s unhygienic.”

Glod turned to Imp. “I think I handled that pretty well,” he said.

“Good. Llisten, this is a very—”

“Got twelve dollars?”

“What?”

“Something of a bargain, I think.”

There was a thump behind them. Lias appeared, rolling a very large drum and carrying a couple of cymbals under his arm.

“I said I’d got no money!” Imp hissed.

“Yes, but... well, everyone says they’ve got no money. That’s sense. You don’t want to go around saying you’ve got money. You mean you’ve really got no money?”

“No!”

“Not even twelve dollars?”

“No!”

Lias dumped the drum, the cymbals and a pile of sheet-music on the counter.

“How much for everything?” he said.

“Fifteen dollars,” said the old woman.

Lias sighed and straightened up. There was a distant look in his eyes for a moment, and then he hit himself on the jaw. He fumbled around inside his mouth with a finger and then produced

Imp stared.

“Here, let me have a look,” said Glod. He snatched the thing from Lias’s unprotesting fingers and examined it carefully. “Hey! Fifty carats at least!”

“I’m not taking that,” said the old woman. “It’s been in a troll’s mouth!”

“You eat eggs, don’t you?” said Glod. “Anyway, everyone knows trolls’ teeth are pure diamond.”

The old woman took the tooth and examined it by candlelight.

“If I took it along to one of those jewellers in Nonesuch Street they’d tell me it’s worth two hundred dollars,” said Glod.

“Well, I’m telling you it’s worth fifteen right here,” said the old lady. The diamond magically disappeared somewhere about her person. She gave them a bright, fresh smile.

“ Why couldn’t we just take it off her?” said Glod, when they were outside.

“Because she’s a poor defencelless olld woman,” said Imp.

“Exactly! My point exactly!”

Glod looked up at Lias.

“You got a whole mouthful of them things?”

“Yup.”

“Only I owe my landlord two months’ re—”

“Don’t even fink about it,” said the troll levelly.

Behind them, the door slammed shut.

“Look, cheer up,” said Glod. “Tomorrow I’ll find us a gig. Don’t worry. I know everyone in this city. Three of us... that’s a band. ”

“We haven’t even practised together properlly,” said Imp.

“We’ll practise as we go along,” said Glod. “Welcome to the world of professional musicianship.”

Susan did not know much about history. It always seemed a particularly dull subject. The same stupid things were done over and over again by tedious people. What was the point? One king was pretty much like another.

The class was learning about some revolt in which some peasants had wanted to stop being peasants and, since the nobles had won, had stopped being peasants really quickly. Had they bothered to learn to read and acquire some history books they’d have learned about the uncertain merits of things like scythes and pitchforks when used in a battle against crossbows and broadswords.

She listened half-heartedly for a while, until boredom set in, and then took out a book and let herself fade from the notice of the world.

SQUEAK!

Susan glanced sideways.

There was a tiny figure on the floor by her desk. It looked very much like a rat skeleton in a black robe, holding a very small scythe.

Susan looked back at her book. Such things did not exist. She was quite certain about that.

SQUEAK!

Susan looked down again. The apparition was still there. There had been cheese on toast for supper the previous night. In books, at least, you were supposed to expect things after a late-night meal like that.

“You don’t exist,” she said. “You’re just a piece of cheese.”

SQUEAK?

When the creature was sure it had got her full attention, it pulled out a tiny hourglass on a silver chain and pointed at it urgently.

Against all rational considerations, Susan reached down and opened her hand. The thing climbed on to it—its feet felt like pins—and looked at her expectantly.

Susan lifted it up to eye level. All right, perhaps it was a figment of her imagination. She ought to take it seriously.

“You’re not going to say something like “Oh, my paws and whiskers", are you?” she said quietly. “If you do, I shall go and drop you in the privy.”