Hogfather

a little for expenses, Mr. Catseye. A little Hogswatch present, you might say. Never take the lot and run. Take a little and walk. Dress neat. That’s my motto. Dress neat and walk away slowly. Never run. Never run. The Watch’ll always chase a running man. They’re like terriers for giving chase. No, you walk out slow, you walk round the corner, you wait till there’s a lot of excitement, then you turn around and walk back. They can’t cope with that, see. Half the time they’ll stand aside to let you walk past. ‘Good evening, officers,’ you say, and then you go home for your tea.”
    “Wheee! Gets you out of trouble, I can see that. If you’ve got the nerve.”
    “Oh, no, Mr. Peachy. Doesn’t get you out of. Keeps you out of.”
    It was like a very good schoolroom, Ernie thought (and immediately tried to forget). Or a back-street gym when a champion prizefighter had just strolled in.
    “What’s up with your mouth, Banjo?”
    “He lost a tooth, Mr. Brown,” said another voice, and sniggered.
    “Lost a toot’, Mr. Brown,” said the thunder that was Banjo.
    “Keep your eyes on the road, Ernie,” said Teatime beside him. “We don’t want an accident, do we…”
    The road here was deserted, despite the bustle of the city behind them and the bulk of the University nearby. There were a few streets, but the buildings were abandoned. And something was happening to the sound. The rest of Ankh-Morpork seemed very far away, the sounds arriving as if through quite a thick wall. They were entering that scorned little corner of Ankh-Morpork that had long been the site of the University’s rubbish pits and was now known as the Unreal Estate.
    “Bloody wizards,” muttered Ernie, automatically.
    “I beg your pardon?” said Teatime.
    “My great-grandpa said we used t’own prop’ty round here. Low levels of magic, my arse! Hah, it’s all right for them wizards, they got all kindsa spells to protect ’em. Bit of magic here, bit of magic there…Stands to reason it’s got to go somewhere, right?”
    “There used to be warning signs up,” said the neat voice from behind.
    “Yeah, well, warning signs in Ankh-Morpork might as well have ‘Good firewood’ written on them,” said someone else.
    “I mean, stands to reason, they chuck out an old spell for exploding this, and another one for twiddlin’ that, and another one for making carrots grow, they finish up interfering with one another, who knows what they’ll end up doing?” said Ernie. “Great-grandpa said sometimes they’d wake up in the morning and the cellar’d be higher than the attic. And that weren’t the worst,” he added darkly.
    “Yeah, I heard where it got so bad you could walk down the street and meet yourself coming the other way,” someone supplied. “It got so’s you didn’t know it was bum or breakfast time, I heard.”
    “The dog used to bring home all kinds of stuff,” said Ernie. “Great-grandpa said half the time they used to dive behind the sofa if it came in with anything in its mouth. Corroded fire spells startin’ to fizz, broken wands with green smoke coming out of ’em and I don’t know what else…and if you saw the cat playing with anything, it was best not to try to find out what it was, I can tell you.”
    He twitched the reins, his current predicament almost forgotten in the tide of hereditary resentment.
    “I mean, they say all the old spell books and stuff was buried deep and they recycle the used spells now, but that don’t seem much comfort when your potatoes started walkin’ about,” he grumbled. “My great-grandpa went to see the head wizard about it, and he said”—he put on a strangled nasal voice which was his idea of how you talked when you’d got an education—“‘Oh, there might be some temp’ry inconvenience now, my good man, but just you come back in fifty thousand years.’ Bloody wizards.”
    The horse turned a corner.
    This was a dead-end street. Half-collapsed houses, windows smashed, doors stolen, leaned against one another on either side.
    “I heard they said they were going to clean up this place,” said someone.
    “Oh, yeah ,” said Ernie, and spat. When it hit the ground it ran away. “And you know what? You get loonies coming in all the time now, poking around, pulling things about—”
    “Just at the wall up ahead,” said Teatime conversationally. “I think you generally go through just where there’s a pile of rubble by the old dead tree, although