AllFreeNovel
Share Us
'What, you get him to hit himself, sort of thing?' said Nanny. 'Sounds daft.'
Magrat glowered.
'What do you know about it?' she said, with uncharacteristic sharpness.
'What?'
'Well, I'm fed up!' said Magrat. 'At least I'm making an effort to learn things! I don't go around just bullying people and acting bad-tempered all the time!'
Nanny took her pipe out of her mouth.
'I'm not bad-tempered,' she said mildly.
* The Yen Buddhists are the richest religious sect in the universe. They hold that the accumulation of money is a great evil and burden to the soul. They therefore, regardless of personal hazard, see it as their unpleasant duty to acquire as much as possible in order to reduce the risk to innocent people.
'I wasn't talking about you!'
'Well, Esme's always been bad-tempered,' said Nanny. 'It comes natural to her.'
'And she hardly ever does real magic. What good is being a witch if you don't do magic? Why doesn't she use it to help people?'
Nanny peered at her through the pipe smoke.
' 'Cos she knows how good she'd be at it, I suppose,' she said. 'Anyway, I've known her a long time. Known the whole family. All the Weatherwaxes is good at magic, even the men. They've got this magical streak in 'em. Kind of a curse. Anyway . . . she thinks you can't help people with magic. Not properly. It's true, too.'
'Then what good - ?'
Nanny prodded at the pipe with a match.
'I seem to recall she come over and helped you out when you had that spot of plague in your village,' she said. 'Worked the clock around, I recall. Never known her not treat someone ill who needed it, even when they, you know, were pretty oozy. And when the big ole troll that lives under Broken Mountain came down for help because his wife was sick and everyone threw rocks at him, I remember it was Esme that went back with him and delivered the baby. Hah . . . then when old Chickenwire Hopkins threw a rock at Esme a little while afterwards all his barns was mysteriously trampled flat in the night. She always said you can't help people with magic, but you can help them with skin. By doin' real things, she meant.'
'I'm not saying she's not basically a nice person -' Magrat began.
'Hah! 7 am. You'd have to go a long day's journey to find someone basically nastier than Esme,' said Nanny Ogg, 'and this is me sayin' it. She knows exactly what she is. She was born to be good and she don't like it.'
Nanny tapped her pipe out on the rail and turned back to the saloon.
'What you got to understand about Esme, my girl,' she said, 'is that she's got a psycholology as well as a big eggo. I'm damn glad I ain't.'
Granny was twelve dollars ahead. Everything else in the saloon had stopped. You could hear the distant splash of the paddles and the cry of the leadman.
Granny won another five dollars with a three-card Onion.
'What do you mean, a psycholology?' said Magrat. 'Have you been reading books?'
Nanny ignored her.
'The thing to watch out for now,' she said, 'is when she goes “tch, tch, tch” under her breath. That comes after the ear-cleanin'. It gen'rally means she's plannin' somethin'.'
Mister Frank drummed his fingers on the table, realized to his horror that he was doing it, and bought three new cards to cover his confusion. The old baggage didn't appear to notice.
He stared at the new hand.
He ventured two dollars and bought one more card.
He stared again.
What were the odds, he thought, against getting a Great Onion twice in one day?
