The Truth

Mr Pin read it. He turned a few pages quickly.



'You may show it to your monkey,' said Mr Slant.



Mr Pin managed to grab Mr Tulip's arm before it reached the zombie's head. Mr Slant did not even flinch.



'He's got the story of our lives, Mr Tulip!'



'So? I can still rip his --ing stitched-on head right off!'



'No, you cannot,' said Mr Slant. 'Your colleague will tell you why,'



'Because our legal friend here will have made a lot of copies, won't you, Mr Slant? And probably lodged them in all kinds of places in case he di-- in case--'



'... of accidents,' said Mr Slant smoothly. 'Well done. You have had an interesting career so far, gentlemen. You are quite young. Your talents have taken you a long way in a short time and given you quite a reputation in your chosen profession. While of course I have no idea about the task you are undertaking - no idea whatsoever, I must stress - I have no doubt that you will impress us all.'



'Does he know about the contract in Quirm?' said Mr Tulip.



'Yes,' said Mr Pin.



That stuff with the wire netting and the crabs and that --ing banker?'



'Yes.'



'And the thing with the puppies and that kid?'



'He does now,' said Mr Pin. 'He knows nearly everything. Very



clever. You believe you know where the bodies are buried, Mr Slant?'



'I've talked to one or two of them,' said Mr Slant. 'But it would appear that you have never committed a crime within Ankh-Morpork, otherwise of course I could not talk to you.'



'Who says we've never committed a --ing crime in Ankh-Morpork?' Mr Tulip demanded in an offended tone.



'As I understand it, you have never been to this city before.'



'Well? We've had all --ing day!'



'Have you been caught?' said Mr Slant.



'No!'



Then you have committed no crime. May I express the hope that your business here does not involve any kind of criminal activity?'



'Perish the thought,' said Mr Pin.



'The City Watch here are quite dogged in some respects. And the various Guilds jealously guard their professional territories.'



'We hold the police in high regard,' said Mr Pin. 'We have a great respect for the work they do.'



'We --ing love policemen,' said Mr Tulip.



'If there was a policemen's ball, we would be among the first to buy a ticket,' said Mr Pin.



' 'specially if it was mounted on a plinth, or a little display stand of some sort,' said Mr Tulip, ' 'cos we like beautiful things.'



'I just wanted to be sure that we understood one another,' said Mr Slant, snapping his case closed. He stood up, nodding to them, and walked stiffly out of the room.



'What a--' Mr Tulip began, but Mr Pin raised a finger to his lips. He crossed silently to the door and opened it. The lawyer had gone.



'He knows what we're --ing here for,' Mr Tulip whispered hotly. 'What's he --ing pretending for?'



'Because he's a lawyer,' said Mr Pin. 'Nice place, this,' he added, in a slightly over-loud voice.



Mr Tulip looked around. 'Nah,' he said dismissively. 'I fort that at the start, but it's just a late eighteenth-century copy of the --ing Baroque Style. They got the dimensions all wrong. Didja see them pillars in the hall? Didja? --ing sixth-century Ephebian with



Second-Empire Djelibeybian --ing finials! It was all I could do not to laugh,'



'Yes,' said Mr Pin. 'As I have remarked before, Mr Tulip, in many ways you are a very unexpected man.'



Mr Tulip walked over to a shrouded picture and tweaked the cloth aside.



'Well, -- me, it's a --ing da Quirm,' he said. 'I seen a print of it. Woman Holding Ferret. He did it just after he moved from Genua and was influenced by --ing Caravati. Look at that --ing brushwork, will ya? See the way the line of the hand draws the --ing eye into the picture? Look at the quality of the light on the landscape you can see through the --ing window there. See the way the ferret's nose follows you around the room? That's --ing genius, that is. I don't mind telling you that if I was here by myself I'd be in --ing tears.'



'It's very pretty.'



'Pretty?' said Mr Tulip, despairing of his colleague's taste. He walked over to a statue by the door and stared hard at it, then ran his fingers lightly across the marble.



'I fort so! This is a --ing Scolpini! I'd bet anything. But I've never seen it in a catalogue. And it's been left in an empty house, where anyone could just --ing walk in and nick it!'



This place is under powerful protection. You saw the seals on the door.'



'Guilds? Bunch of --ing amateurs. We could go through this place like a hot knife through --ing thin ice and you know it. Amateurs and rocks and lawn ornaments and dead men walking about... We could knock this --ing city over.'



Mr Pin said nothing. A similar idea had occurred to him, but unlike with his colleague deed did not automatically follow upon what passed for thought.



The Firm had, indeed, not operated in Ankh-Morpork before. Mr Pin had kept away because, well, there were plenty of other cities, and an instinct for survival had told him that the Big Wahoonie*



The world's rarest and most evil-smelling vegetable, and consequently much prized by connoisseurs (who seldom prize anything cheap and common). Also a slang name for Ankh-Morpork, although it does not smell as bad as that.



should wait a while. He'd had a Plan, ever since he'd met Mr Tulip and found that his own inventiveness combined with Tulip's incessant anger promised a successful career. He'd developed their business in Genua, Pseudopolis, Quirm - cities smaller and easier to navigate than Ankh-Morpork although, these days, it seemed they increasingly resembled it.



The reason that they had done well, he'd realized, was that sooner or later people went soft. Take the trollish Breccia, f'rinstance. Once the honk and slab route had been established all the way to Uberwald, and the rival clans had been eliminated, the trolls had got soft. The tons acted like society lords. It was the same everywhere - the big old gangs and families reached some kind of equilibrium with society and settled down to be a specialist kind of businessman. They cut down on henchmen and employed butlers instead. And then, when there was a bit of difficulty, they needed muscle that could think... and there was the New Firm, ready and willing.



And waiting.



One day there'd be time for a new generation, Mr Pin thought. One with a new way of doing things, one without the shackles of tradition holding them back. Happening people. Mr Tulip, for example, happened all the time.



'Hey, will you --ing look at this?' said the happening Tulip, who had uncovered another painting. 'Signed by Gogli, but it's a --ing fake. Look at the way the light falls here, willya? And the leaves on this tree? If --ing Gogli painted that, it was with his --ing foot. Probably by some --ing pupil



While they had been marking time in the city Mr Pin had followed Mr Tulip, trailing scouring powder and canine worming tablets, through one after another of the city's art galleries. The man had insisted. It had been an education, mostly for the curators.



Mr Tulip had the instinct for art which he did not have for chemistry. Sneezing icing sugar and dribbling foot powder, he was ushered into private galleries, where he ran his bloodshot eye over nervously proffered trays of ivory miniatures.



Mr Pin had watched in silent admiration while his colleague spoke colourfully and at length on the differences between ivory faked the



old way, with bones, and the --ing new way the --ing dwarfs had come up with, using --ing refined oil, chalk and --ing Spirits of Nacle.



He'd lurched over to the tapestries, declaimed at length about high and low weaving, burst into tears in front of a verdant scene, and then demonstrated that the gallery's prized thirteenth-century Sto Lat tapestry couldn't be more than a hundred years old because, see that -ing bit of purple there? No way was that --ing dye around then. 'And... what's this? An Agatean embalming pot from the P'gi Su Dynasty? Someone took you to the --ing cleaners, mister. The glaze is rubbish.'



It was astounding, and Mr Pin had been so enthralled that he had all but forgotten to slip a few small valuable items into his pocket. But in truth he was familiar with Tulip on art. When they had occasionally to torch a premises Mr Tulip always made sure that any truly irreplaceable pieces were removed first, even though that meant taking extra time to tie the inhabitants to their beds. Somewhere under that self-inflicted scar tissue and at the heart of that shuddering anger was the soul of a true connoisseur with an unerring instinct for beauty. It was a strange thing to find in the body of a man who would mainline bath salts.



The big doors at the other end of the room swung open, revealing the dark space beyond.



'Mr Tulip?' said Mr Pin.



Tulip drew himself away from a painstaking examination of a possible Tapasi table, with its magnificent inlay work involving dozens of --ing rare veneers.



'Huh?'



Time to meet the bosses again,' said Mr Pin.



William was just getting ready to leave his office for good when someone knocked at his door.



He opened it cautiously, but it was pushed the rest of the way.



'You utterly, utterly - ungrateful person!'



It wasn't a nice thing to be called, especially by a young lady. She used a simple word like 'ungrateful' in a way that would require a dash and an 'ing' in the mouth of Mr Tulip.



William had seen Sacharissa Cripslock before, generally helping her grandfather in his tiny workshop. He'd never paid her much attention. She wasn't particularly attractive, but she wasn't particularly bad-looking, either. She was just a girl in an apron, doing slightly dainty things in the background, such as light dusting and arranging flowers. Insofar as he'd formed any opinion of her, it was that she suffered from misplaced gentility and the mistaken belief that etiquette meant good breeding. She mistook mannerisms for manners.



Now he could see her a lot plainer, mostly because she was advancing towards him across the room, and in the light-headed way of people who think they're just about to die he realized that she was quite good-looking if considered over several centuries. Concepts of beauty change over the years, and two hundred years ago Sacharissa's eyes would have made the great painter Caravati bite, his brush in half; three hundred years ago the sculptor Mauvaise would have taken one look at her chin and dropped his chisel on his foot; a thousand years ago the Ephebian poets would have agreed that her nose alone was capable of launching at least forty ships. And she had good medieval ears.



Her hand was quite modern, though, and it caught William a stinging blow on the cheek.



'That twenty dollars a month was nearly all we had!'



'Sorry? What?'



'All right, he isn't very fast, but in his day he was one of the best engravers in the business!'



'Oh... yes. Er...' William had a sudden flash of guilt about Mr Cripslock.



'And you took it away, just like that!'



'I didn't mean to! The dwarfs just... things just happened!'



'You're working for them?'



'Sort of... with them...' said William.



'While we starve, I suppose?'



Sacharissa stood there panting. She had a well-crafted supply of other features that never go out of fashion at all and are perfectly at home in any century. She clearly believed that severe, old-fashioned dresses toned these down. They did not.



'Look, I'm stuck with them,' said William, trying not to stare. 'I mean, stuck with the dwarfs. Lord Vetinari was very... definite about it. And it's suddenly all become very complicated--'



The Guild of Engravers is going to be livid about this, you do know that?' she demanded.



'Er... yes.' A desperate idea struck William rather harder than her hand. That's a point. You wouldn't like to, er, be official about that, would you? You know: "We are livid," says spokesm-- spokeswoman for the Guild of Engravers?'



'Why?' she said suspiciously.



'I'm desperate for things to put in my next edition,' said William desperately. 'Look, can you help me? I can give you - oh, twenty pence an item, and I could use at least five a day.'



She opened her mouth to snap a reply, but calculation cut in. 'A dollar a day?' she said.



'More, if they're nice and long,' said William wildly.



'For that letter thing you do?'



'Yes.'



'A dollar?'



'Yes.'



She eyed him with mistrust. 'You can't afford that, can you? I thought you only got thirty dollars yourself. You told grandfather.'



Things have moved on a bit. I haven't caught up with it myself, to tell you the truth.'



She was still looking at him doubtfully, but natural Ankh-Morpork interest in the distant prospect of a dollar was gaining the upper hand.



'Well, I hear things,' she began. 'And... well, writing things down? I suppose that's a suitable job for a lady, isn't it? It's practically cultural.'



'Er... close, I suppose.'



'I wouldn't like to do anything that wasn't... proper.'



'Oh, I'm sure it's proper.'



'And the Guild can't object to that, can they? You've been doing it for years, after all...'



'Look, I'm just me,' said William. 'If the Guild object, they'll have to sort it out with the Patrician.'



'Well... all right... if you're sure it's an acceptable job for a young lady



'Come down to the printing works tomorrow, then,' said William. 'I think we ought to be able to produce another paper of news in a few days.'



This was a ballroom, still plush in red and gold, but musty in the semi-darkness and ghostly with its shrouded chandeliers. The candlelight in the centre was dimly reflected from the mirrors around the walls; they had probably once brightened the place up considerably but over the years some sort of curious tarnish had blotched its way across them, so that the reflections of the candles looked like dim sub-aqueous glows through a forest of seaweed.



Mr Pin was halfway across the floor when he realized that the only footsteps he could hear were his own. Mr Tulip had veered off in .the gloom and was dragging the shroud off something that had been pushed against one wall.



'Well. I'll be a...' the man began. 'This is a --ing treasure! I fort so! A genuine --ing Intaglio Ernesto, too. See that mother-of-pearl work there?'



'This isn't the time, Mr Tulip--'



'He only made six of them. Oh, no, they haven't even kept it --ing tuned!'



'Godsdammit, we're supposed to be professionals



'Perhaps your - colleague would like it as a present?' said a voice from the centre of the room.



There were half a dozen chairs around the circle of candlelight. They were an old-fashioned kind, and the backs curved out and up to form a deep leathery arch that had, presumably, been designed to keep out the draughts but now gave the occupants their own deep pools of shadow.



Mr Pin had been here before. He'd admired the set-up. Anyone inside the ring of candles couldn't see who was in the depths of the chairs, while at the same time being fully visible themselves.



It occurred to him now that the arrangement also meant that the people in the chairs couldn't see who was in the other chairs.



Mr Pin was a rat. He was quite happy with the description. Rats



had a lot to recommend them. And this layout had been dreamed up by someone who thought like him.



One of the chairs said, 'Your friend Daffodil--'



'Tulip,' said Mr Pin.



'Your friend Mr Tulip would perhaps like part of your payment to be the harpsichord?' said the chair.



'It's not a --ing harpsichord, it's a --ing virginal,' growled Mr Tulip. 'One --ing string to a note instead of two! So called because it was an instrument for --ing young ladies!'



'My word, was it?' said one of the chairs. 'I thought it was just a sort of early piano!'



'Intended to be played by young ladies,' said Mr Pin smoothly. 'And Mr Tulip does not collect art, he merely... appreciates it. Our payment will be in gems, as agreed.'



'As you wish. Please step into the circle...'



'--ing harpsichord,' muttered Mr Tulip.



The New Firm came under the hidden gaze of the chairs as they took up their positions.



What the chairs saw was this:



Mr Pin was small and slim and, like his namesake, slightly larger in the head than ought to be the case. If there was a word for him apart from 'rat' it was 'dapper'; he drank little, he watched what he ate and considered that his body, slightly malformed though it was, was a temple. He also used too much oil on his hair and parted it in the middle in a way that was twenty years out of style, and his black suit was on the greasy side, and his little eyes were constantly moving, taking in everything.



It was hard to see Mr Tulip's eyes, because of a certain puffiness probably caused by too much enthusiasm for things in bags.* The bags had also possibly caused the general blotchiness and the thick veins that stood out on his forehead, but Mr Tulip was in any case the kind of heavy-set man who is on the verge of bursting out of his clothes and, despite his artistic inclinations, projected the image of a would-be wrestler who had failed the intelligence test. If his



* Your Brain On Drugs is a terrible sight, but Mr Tulip was living proof of the fact that so was Your Brain on a cocktail of horse liniment, sherbet and powdered water-retention pills.



body was a temple, it was one of those strange ones where people did odd things to animals in the basement, and if he watched what he ate it was only to see it wriggle.



Several of the chairs wondered, not if they were doing the right thing, since that was indisputable, but whether they were doing it with the right people. Mr Tulip, after all, wasn't a man you'd want to see standing too close to a naked flame.



'When will you be ready?' said a chair. 'How is your... protege today?'



'We think Tuesday morning would be a good time,' said Mr Pin. 'By then he'll be as good as he's going to get.'



'And there will be no deaths involved,' said a chair. 'This is important.'



'Mr Tulip will be as gentle as a lamb,' said Mr Pin.



Unseen gazes avoided the sight of Mr Tulip, who had chosen this moment to suck up his nose a large quantity of slab.



'Er, yes,' said a chair. 'His lordship is not to be harmed any more than is strictly necessary. Vetinari dead would be more dangerous than Vetinari alive.'



'And at all costs there must be no trouble with the Watch.'



'Yeah, we know about the Watch,' said Mr Pin. 'Mr Slant told us.'



'Commander Vimes is running a very... efficient Watch.'



'No problem,' said Mr Pin.



'And it employs a werewolf.'



White powder fountained into the air. Mr Pin had to slap his colleague on the back.



'A --ing werewolf? Are you --ing crazy?'



'Uh... why does your partner keep saying ' 'ing' ', Mr Pin?' said a chair.



'You must be out of your --ing minds!' Tulip growled.



'Speech impediment,' said Pin. 'A werewolf? Thank you for telling us. Thank you very much. They're worse than vampires when they're on the trail! You do know that, do you?'



'You were recommended to us as men of resource.'



'Expensive men of resource,' said Mr Pin.



A chair sighed. There are seldom any other kind. Very well, very well. Mr Slant will discuss this with you.'



'Yeah, but they've got a sense a' smell that you wouldn't believe,' Mr Tulip went on. 'Money's no use to a --ing dead man.'



'Are there any other surprises?' said Mr Pin. 'You've got bright watchmen and one of 'em's a werewolf. Anything else? They've got trolls too?'



'Oh, yes. Several. And dwarfs. And zombies.'



'In a Watch? What kind of a city are you running here?'



'We are not running the city,' said a chair.



'But we care about the way it is going,' said another.



'Ah,' said Mr Pin. 'Right. I remember. You are concerned citizens.' He knew about concerned citizens. Wherever they were, they all spoke the same private language, where 'traditional values' meant 'hang someone'. He did not have a problem with this, broadly speaking, but it never hurt to understand your employer.



'You could have got someone else,' he said. 'You've got a guild of Assassins here.'



A chair made a sucking sound between its teeth.



'The trouble with the city at present,' it said, 'is that a number of otherwise intelligent people find the status quo... convenient, even though it will undoubtedly ruin the city.'



'Ah,' said Mr Pin. They are unconcerned citizens.'



'Precisely, gentlemen.'



There's a lot of them?'



The chair ignored this.



'We look forward to seeing you again, gentlemen. Tomorrow night. When, I trust, you will announce your readiness. Good evening.'



The circle of chairs was silent for a while after the New Firm had left. Then a black-clad figure entered soundlessly through the big doors, approached the light, nodded and hurried away.



'They're well outside the building,' said a chair.



'What ghastly people.'



'We should have used the Assassins' Guild, though.'



'Hah! They've done rather well out of Vetinari. In any case, we do not want him dead. However, it occurs to me that we may eventually have a job for the Guild, later on.'



'Quite so. When our friends have safely left the city... the roads can be so dangerous at this time of year.'



'No, gentlemen. We will stick to our plan. The one called Charlie will be kept around until everything is entirely settled, in case he can be of further use, and then our gentlemen will take him a long, long way away to, hah, pay him off. Perhaps later we will call the Assassins in, just in case Mr Pin has any clever ideas.'



'Good point. Although it does seem such a waste. The things one could do with Charlie...'



'I told you, it would not work. The man is a clown.'



'I suppose you are right. Better something once-and-for-all, then.'



'I'm sure we understand one another. And now... this meeting of the Committee to Unelect the Patrician is declared closed. And hasn't happened.'



Lord Vetinari by habit rose so early that bedtime was merely an excuse to change his clothes.



He liked the time just before a winter's dawn. It was generally foggy, which made it hard to see the city, and for a few hours there was no sound but the occasional brief scream.



But the tranquillity was broken this morning by a cry just outside the palace gates.



'Hoinarylup!'



He went to the window.



'Squidaped-oyt!'



The Patrician walked back to his desk and rang the bell for his clerk Drumknott, who was despatched to the walls to investigate.



'It is the beggar known as Foul Ole Ron, sir,' Drumknott reported five minutes later. 'Selling this... paper full of things.' He held it between two fingers as though expecting it to explode.



Lord Vetinari took it and read through it. Then he read through it again.



'Well, well,' he said.' "The Ankh-Morpork Times". Was anyone else buying this?'



'A number of people, my lord. People coming off the night shifts, market people and so on.'



'I see no mention of Hoinarylup or Squidaped-oyt.'



'No, my lord.'



'How very strange.' Lord Vetinari read for a moment and said, 'Hm-,'mz. Clear my appointments this morning, will you? I will see the Guild of Towncriers at nine o'clock and the Guild of Engravers at ten past.'



'I wasn't aware they had appointments, sir.'



'They will have,' said Lord Vetinari. 'When they see this, they will have. Well, well... I see fifty-six people were hurt in a tavern brawl.'



'That seems rather a lot, my lord.'



'It must be true, Drumknott,' said the Patrician. 'It's in the paper. Oh, and send a message to that nice Mr de Worde, too. I will see him at nine thirty.'



He ran his eye down the grey type again. 'And please also put out the word that I wish to see no harm coming to Mr de Worde, will you?'



Drumknott, usually so adept in his understanding of his master's requirements, hesitated a moment.



'My lord, do you mean that you want no harm to come to Mr de Worde, or that you want no harm to come to Mr de Worde?'



'Did you wink at me, Drumknott?'



'No, sir!'



'Drumknott, I believe it is the right of every citizen of Ankh-Morpork to walk the streets unmolested.'



'Good gods, sir! Is it?'



'Indeed.'



'But I thought you were very much against movable type, sir. You said that it would make printing too cheap, and people would--'



'Sheearna-plp!' shouted the newspaper seller, down by the gates.



'Are you poised for the exciting new millennium that lies before us, Drumknott? Are you ready to grasp the future with a willing hand?'



'I don't know, my lord. Is special clothing required?'



The other lodgers were already at the breakfast table when William hurried down. He was hurrying because Mrs Arcanum had Views about people who were late for meals.



Mrs Arcanum, proprietress of Mrs Eucrasia Arcanum's Lodging House for Respectable Working Men, was what Sacharissa was unconsciously training to be. She wasn't just respectable, she was Respectable; it was a lifestyle, religion and hobby combined. She liked respectable people who were Clean and Decent; she used the phrase as if it was impossible to be one without being the other. She kept respectable beds and cooked cheap but respectable meals for her respectable lodgers, who apart from William were mostly middle-aged, unmarried and extremely sober. They were mainly craftsmen in small trades, and were almost all heavily built, well-scrubbed, owned serious boots and were clumsily polite at the dining table.



Oddly enough - or, at least, oddly enough to William's expectations of people like Mrs Arcanum - she wasn't averse to dwarfs and trolls. At least, the clean and decent ones. Mrs Arcanum rated Decency above species.



'It says here fifty-six people were hurt in a brawl,' said Mr Mackleduff, who by dint of being the longest-surviving lodger acted as a kind of president at mealtimes. He had bought a copy of the Times on his way home from the bakery, where he was night-shift foreman.



'Fancy,' said Mrs Arcanum.



'I think it must have been five or six,' said William.



'Says fifty-six here,' said Mr Mackleduff sternly. 'In black and white.'



'It must be right,' said Mrs Arcanum, to general agreement, 'otherwise they wouldn't let them put it in.'



'I wonder who's doing it?' said Mr Prone, who travelled in wholesale boots and shoes.



'Oh, they'd be special people for doing this,' said Mr Mackleduff.



'Really?' said William.



'Oh, yes,' said Mr Mackleduff, who was one of those large men who were instantly expert on anything. They wouldn't allow just anyone to write what they like. That stands to reason.'



So it was in a thoughtful mood that William made his way to the shed behind the Bucket.



Goodmountain looked up from the stone where he was carefully setting the type for a playbill.



'There's a spot of cash for you over there,' he said, nodding to a bench.



It was mostly in coppers. It was almost thirty dollars.



William stared at it. This can't be right,' he whispered.



'Mr Ron and his friends kept coming back for more,' said Goodmountain.



'But... but it was only usual stuff,' said William. 'It wasn't even anything very important. Just... stuff that happened.'



'Ah, well, people like to know about stuff that happened,' said the dwarf. 'And I reckon we can sell three times as many tomorrow if we halve the price.'



'Halve the price?'



'People like to be in the know. Just a thought.' The dwarf grinned again. There's a young lady in the back room.'



In the days when this place had been a laundry, back in the pre-rocking-horse age, one area had been partitioned off with some cheap panelling to waist height, to segregate the clerks and the person whose job it was to explain to customers where their socks had gone. Sacharissa was sitting primly on a stool, clutching her handbag to her with her elbows close to her sides in order to expose herself to as little of the grime as possible.



She gave him a nod.



Now, why had he asked her to come along? Oh, yes... she was sensible, more or less, and did her grandfather's books and, frankly, William didn't meet many literate people. He met the sort to whom a pen was a piece of difficult machinery. If she knew what an apostrophe was, he could put up with the fact that she acted as if she was living in a previous century.



'Is this your office now?' she whispered.



'I suppose so.'



'You didn't tell me about the dwarfs!'



'Do you mind?'



'Oh, no. Dwarfs are very law-abiding and respectable, in my experience.'



William now realized that he was talking to a girl who had



never been in certain streets when the bars were closing.



'I've already got two good items for you,' Sacharissa went on, as if imparting state secrets.



'Er... yes?'



'My grandfather says this is the longest, coldest winter he can remember.'



'Yes?'



'Well, he's eighty. That's a long time.'



'Oh.'



'And the meeting of the Dolly Sisters' Baking and Flower Circle Annual Competition had to be abandoned last night because the cake table got knocked over. I found out all about it from the secretary, and I've written it all down neatly.'



'Oh? Um. Is that really interesting, do you think?'



She handed him a page torn from a cheap exercise book.



He read: ' "The Dolly Sisters' Baking and Flower Circle Annual Competition was held in the Reading Room in Lobbin Clout Street, Dolly Sisters. Mrs H. Rivers was the President. She welcomed all members and commented on the Sumptuous Offerings. Prizes were awarded as follows



William ran his eye down the meticulous list of names and awards.



' "Specimen in Jar"?' he queried.



'That was the competition for dahlias,' said Sacharissa.



William carefully inserted the word 'dahlia' after the word 'specimen', and read on.



' "A fine display of Loose Stool Covers"?'