Once More With Footnotes

Granny Weatherwax's worldview was no place for second place. You won, or y ou were a loser. There was nothing wrong with being a loser except for the fact that, of course, you weren't the winner. Nanny had always pursued the policy of being a good loser. People liked you when you almost won, and bought you drinks. "She only just lost" was a much better compliment than "she only just won".
     
                  Runners-up had more fun, she reckoned. But it wasn't a word Granny had much time for.
     
                  In her own darkened cottage, Granny Weatherwax sat and watched the fire die.
     
                  It was a gray-walled room, the color that old plaster gets not so much from dirt as from age. There was not a thing in it that wasn't useful, utilitarian, earning its keep. Every flat surface in Nanny Ogg's cottage had been pressed into service as a holder for ornaments and potted plants. People gave Nanny Ogg things. Cheap fairground tat, Granny always called it. At least, in public. What she thought of it in the privacy of her own head, she never said.
     
                    She rocked gently as the last ember winked out.
     
                  It's hard to contemplate, in the gray hours of the night, that probably the only reason people would come to your funeral would be to make sure you're dead.
     
    -
     
                  Next day, Percy Hopcroft opened his back door and looked straight up into the blue stare of Granny Weatherwax. "Oh my," he said, under his breath. Granny gave an awkward little cough.
     
                  "Mr. Hopcroft, I've come about them apples you named after Mrs. Ogg," she said.
     
                  Percy's knees began to tremble, and his wig started to slide off the back of his head to the hoped-for secu rity of the floor.
     
                  "I should like to thank you for doing it because it has made her very happy," Granny went on, in a tone of voice which would have struck one who knew her as curiously monotonous. "She has done a lot of fine work and it is about time sh e got her little reward. It was a very nice thought. And so I have brung you this little token — " Hopcroft jumped backward as Granny's hand dipped swiftly into her apron and produced a small black bottle " — which is very rare because of the rare herbs in it. What are rare. Extremely rare herbs."
     
                  Eventually it crept over Hopcroft that he was supposed to take the bottle. He gripped the top of it very carefully, as if it might whistle or develop legs.
     
                  "Uh ... thank you ver' much," he mumbled.
     
                  Granny nodded stiffly.
     
                  "Blessings be upon this house," she said, and turned and walked away down the path.
     
                  Hopcroft shut the door carefully, and then flung himself against it.
     
                  "You start packing right now!" he shouted to his wife, who'd been watching from the kit chen door.
     
                  "What? Our whole life's here! We can't just run away from it!"
     
                  "Better to run than hop, woman! What's she want from me? What's she want? She's never nice!"
     
                  Mrs. Hopcroft stood firm. She'd just got the cottage looking right and they'd bough t a new pump. Some things were hard to leave.
     
                  "Let's just stop and think, then," she said. "What's in that bottle?"
     
                  Hopcroft held it at arm's length. "Do you want to find out?"
     
                  "Stop shaking, man! She didn't actually threaten, did she?"
     
                  "She said ' Blessings be upon this house'! Sounds pretty damn threatening to me! That was Granny Weatherwax, that was!"
     
                  He put the bottle on the table. They stared at it, standing in the cautious leaning position of people who were ready to run if anything began to happen.
     
                  "Says 'Haire Restorer' on the label," said Mrs. Hopcroft. I ain't using it!
     
                  "She'll ask us about it later. That's her way. "
     
                  " If you think for one moment I'm — "
     
                  " We can try it out on the dog."
     
    -
     
                  "That's a good