Lords and Ladies

out.
    “You don’t mean that dwarf who runs the delicatessen in—” he began.
    “I mean you always got the impression she could see right through you,” said Ridcully, slightly more sharply than he had intended. “And she could run…”
    He lapsed into silence again, staring at the newsreels of memory.
    “I would’ve married her, you know,” he said.
    Ponder said nothing. When you’re a cork in someone else’s stream of consciousness, all you can do is spin and bob in the eddies.
    “What a summer,” murmured Ridcully. “Very like this one, really. Crop circles were bursting like raindrops. And…well, I was having doubts, you know. Magic didn’t seem to be enough. I was a bit…lost. I’d have given it all up for her. Every blasted octogram and magic spell. Without a second thought. You know when they say things like ‘she had a laugh like a mountain stream’?”
    “I’m not personally familiar with it,” said Ponder, “but I have read poetry that—”
    “Load of cobblers, poetry,” said Ridcully. “I’ve listened to mountain streams and they just go trickle, trickle, gurgle. And you get them things in them, you know, insect things with little…anyway. Doesn’t sound like laughter at all, is my point. Poets always get it wrong. ’S’like ‘she had lips like cherries.’ Small, round, and got a stone in the middle? Hah!”
    He shut his eyes. After a while Ponder said, “So what happened, sir?”
    “What?”
    “The girl you were telling me about.”
    “What girl?”
    “This girl.”
    “Oh, that girl. Oh, she turned me down. Said there were things she wanted to do. Said there’d be time enough.”
    There was another pause.
    “What happened then?” Ponder prompted.
    “Happened? What d’you think happened? I went off and studied. Term started. Wrote her a lot of letters but she never answered ’em. Probably never got ’em, they probably eat the mail up there. Next year I was studying all summer and never had time to go back. Never did go back. Exams and so on. Expect she’s dead now, or some fat old granny with a dozen kids. Would’ve wed her like a shot. Like a shot .” Ridcully scratched his head. “Hah…just wish I could remember her name…”
    He stretched out with his feet on the Bursar.
    “’S’funny, that,” he said. “Can’t even remember her name. Hah! She could outrun a horse—”
    “Kneel and deliver!”
    The coach rattled to a halt.
    Ridcully opened an eye.
    “What’s that?” he said.
    Ponder jerked awake from a reverie of lips like mountain streams and looked out of the window.
    “I think,” he said, “it’s a very small highwayman.”

    The coachman peered down at the figure in the road. It was hard to see much from this angle, because of the short body and the wide hat. It was like looking at a well-dressed mushroom with a feather in it.
    “I do apologize for this,” said the very small highwayman. “I find myself a little short.”
    The coachman sighed and put down the reins. Properly arranged holdups by the Bandits’ Guild were one thing, but he was blowed if he was going to be threatened by an outlaw that came up to his waist and didn’t even have a crossbow.
    “You little bastard,” he said. “I’m going to knock your block off.”
    He peered closer.
    “What’s that on your back? A hump?”
    “Ah, you’ve noticed the stepladder,” said the low highwayman. “Let me demonstrate—”
    “What’s happening?” said Ridcully, back in the coach.
    “Um, a dwarf has just climbed up a small stepladder and kicked the coachman in the middle of the road,” said Ponder.
    “That’s something you don’t see every day,” said Ridcully. He looked happy. Up to now, the journey had been quite uneventful.
    “Now he’s coming toward us.”
    “Oh, good.”
    The highwayman stepped over the groaning body of the driver and marched toward the door of the coach, dragging his stepladder behind him.
    He opened the door.
    “Your money or, I’m sorry to say, your—”
    A blast of octarine fire blew his hat off.
    The dwarf’s expression did not change.
    “I wonder if I might be allowed to rephrase my demands?”
    Ridcully looked the elegantly dressed stranger up and down or, rather, down and further down.
    “You don’t look like a dwarf,” he said, “apart from the height, that is.”
    “Don’t look like a dwarf apart from the height?”
    “I mean, the helmet and iron boots department is among those you are lacking in,” said