Snuff

would be proud of it. I’m sure you thought you were doing the right thing when you shook hands with the gardener, but you puzzled people. They don’t know what to make of you. Are you a man or a master? Are you a nob or one of them? Because, commander, from where they sit no man can be both. It would be against nature. And the countryside doesn’t like puzzles, either.’
    ‘Big puzzled trousers!’ said Young Sam and fell on the grass, overwhelmed with humour.
    ‘I don’t know what to make of me either,’ said Vimes, picking up his son and following Willikins down the slope. ‘But Sybil does. She’s got me marked down for balls, dances, dinners, and, oh yes, soirées,’ he finished, in the tones of a man genetically programmed to distrust any word with an acute accent in it. ‘I mean, that sort of thing in the city I’ve come to terms with. If I reckon that it’s going to be too bloody dreadful I make certain I get called out in an emergency halfway through – at least I used to, before Sybil twigged. It’s a terrible thing when a man’s employees take their orders from his wife, you know?’
    ‘Yes, commander. She has given the kitchen staff orders that no bacon sandwiches are to be prepared without her express permission.’
    Vimes winced. ‘You brought the little cookery kit, didn’t you?’
    ‘Unfortunately, her ladyship knows about our little cookery kit, commander. She has forbidden the kitchen to give me bacon unless the order comes directly from her.’
    ‘Honestly, she’s as bad as Vetinari! How does she find out all this stuff?’
    ‘As a matter of fact, commander, I don’t think she does, at least as an actual fact. She just knows you. Perhaps you should think of it as amiable suspicion. We should be getting along, commander. I’m told there is chicken salad for lunch.’
    ‘Do I like chicken salad?’
    ‘Yes, commander, her ladyship tells me that you do.’
    Vimes gave in. ‘Then I do.’
    Back in Scoone Avenue, Vimes and Sybil generally took only one meal a day together, in the kitchen, which was always pleasantly snug by then. They sat facing one another at the table, which was long enough to carry Vimes’s huge collection of sauce bottles, mustard pots, pickles and, of course, chutneys, Vimes being of the popular persuasion that no jar of pickles is ever truly empty if you rattle the spoon around inside it long enough.
    Things were different at the Hall. For one thing there was far too much food. Vimes had not been born yesterday, or even the day before, and refrained from commenting.
    Willikins served Vimes and Lady Sybil. Strictly speaking it wasn’t his job while they were away from home, but strictly speaking most gentlemen’s gentlemen didn’t carry a set of brass knuckles in their well-cut jacket either.
    ‘And what did you boys do this morning?’ said Sybil cheerfully, as the plates were emptied.
    ‘We saw the stinky bone man!’ said Young Sam. ‘He was like all beard, but stinky! And we found the smelly apple tree which is like poo!’
    Lady Sybil’s placid expression did not change. ‘And then you came down the roly-poly hill, didn’t you? And what about the ha-ha, the ho-ho and the he-he?’
    ‘Yes, but there’s all cow poo! I treaded in it!’
    Young Sam waited for an adult response, and his mother said, ‘Well, you’ve got your new country boots, haven’t you? Treading in cow poo is what they’re for.’
    Sam Vimes watched his son’s face glow with impossible pleasure as his mother went on. ‘Your grandfather always told me that if I saw a big pile of muck in a field I should kick it around a bit so as to spread it evenly, because that way all the grass will grow properly.’ She smiled at Vimes’s expression and said, ‘Well, it’s true, dear. A lot of farming is about manure.’
    ‘Just so long as he understands that he doesn’t start kicking up the gutters when he gets back to the city,’ Vimes said. ‘Some of that stuff will kick back.’
    ‘He should learn about the countryside. He should know where food comes from and how we get it. This is important, Sam!’
    ‘Of course, dear.’
    Lady Sybil gave her husband a look only a wife can give. ‘That was your put-upon-but-dutiful voice, Sam.’
    ‘Yes, but I don’t see—’
    Sybil interrupted him. ‘Young Sam will own all this one day and I’d like him to have some idea about it all, just as I’d like you to relax and enjoy your holiday. I’m taking Young Sam over to the