Maskerade

went on spinning just as if it had. If civilization were to collapse totally and the survivors were reduced to eating cockroaches, Madame Dawning would still use a napkin and look down on people who ate their cockroaches the wrong way around.
    “I will, er, show you some examples,” she said. “Excuse me one moment.”
    She scuttled into the long workrooms behind the shop, where there was considerably less gilt, and leaned against the wall and summoned her chief seamstress.
    “Mildred, there are two very strange—”
    She stopped. They’d followed her!
    They were wandering down the aisle between the rows of dressmakers, nodding at people and inspecting some of the dresses on the dummies.
    She hurried back. “I’m sure you’d prefer—”
    “How much is this one?” said Lady Esmerelda, fingering a creation intended for the Dowager Duchess of Quirm.
    “I am afraid that one is not for sale—”
    “How much would it be if it was for sale?”
    “Three hundred dollars, I believe,” said Madame Dawning.
    “Five hundred seems about right,” said Lady Esmerelda.
    “Does it?” said Nanny Ogg. “Oh, it does, does it?”
    The dress was black. At least, in theory it was black. It was black in the same way that a starling’s wing is black. It was black silk, with jet beads and sequins. It was black on holiday.
    “It looks about my size. We’ll take it. Pay the woman, Gytha.”
    Madame’s gyroscope precessed rapidly. “Take it? Now? Five hundred dollars? Pay? Pay now ? Cash ?”
    “See to it, Gytha.”
    “Oh, all right .”
    Nanny Ogg turned away modestly and raised her skirt. There was a series of rustlings and elasticated twangings, and then she turned around, holding a bag.
    She counted out fifty rather warm ten-dollar pieces into Madame Dawning’s unprotesting hand.
    “And now we’ll go back into the shop and have a poke around for the other stuff,” said Lady Esmerelda. “I fancy ostrich feathers myself. And one of those big cloaks the ladies wear. And one of those fans edged with lace.”
    “Why don’t we get some great big diamonds while we’re about it?” said Nanny Ogg sharply.
    “Good idea.”
    Madame Dawning could hear them bickering as they ambled away up the aisle.
    She looked down at the money in her hand.
    She knew about old money, which was somehow hallowed by the fact that people had hung on to it for years, and she knew about new money, which seemed to be being made by all these upstarts that were flooding into the city these days. But under her powdered bosom she was an Ankh-Morpork shopkeeper, and knew that the best kind of money was the sort that was in her hand rather than someone else’s. The best kind of money was mine, not yours.
    Besides, she was also enough of a snob to confuse rudeness with good breeding. 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).
    She hurried after Lady Esmerelda and her rather strange friend. Salt of the earth, she told herself.
    She was in time to overhear a mysterious conversation.
    “I’m being punished, ain’t I, Esme?”
    “Can’t imagine what you’re talking about, Gytha.”
    “Just ’cos I had my little moment.”
    “I really don’t follow you. Anyway, you said you were at your wits’ end with thinking what you’d do with the money.”
    “Yes, but I’d have quite liked to have been at my wits’ end on a big comfy chase longyou somewhere with lots of big strong men buyin’ me chocolates and pressin’ their favors on me.”
    “Money don’t buy happiness, Gytha.”
    “I only wanted to rent it for a few weeks.”

    Agnes rose late, the music still ringing in her ears, and dressed in a dream. But she hung a bed sheet over the mirror first, just in case.
    There were half a dozen of the chorus dancers in the canteen, sharing a stick of celery and giggling.
    And there was André. He was eating something absentmindedly while staring at a sheet of music. Occasionally he’d wave his spoon in the air with a faraway look on his face, and then put it down and make a few notes.
    In mid-beat he caught sight of Agnes, and grinned. “Hello. You look tired.”
    “Er…yes.”
    “You’ve missed all the excitement.”
    “Have I?”
    “The Watch have been here, talking to everyone and asking lots of questions and writing things down very slowly.”
    “What sort of questions?”
    “Well, knowing the Watch, probably ‘Was it you what