'What?' said Nanny, her grin evaporating. 'I'll tan your hide, you little bugger!'
'But, corporal, they have got brooms,' said the captain. 'It's very hard for cleaning staff to look tidy all the time.'
'Cleaning staff?' said Granny.
'I'm sure they're as anxious as you are to get tidied up,' said the captain.
'Excuse me,' said Granny, empowering the words with much the same undertones as are carried by words like 'Charge!' and 'Kill!', 'Excuse me, but does this pointy hat I'm wearing mean anything to you?'
The soldiers looked at it politely.
'Can you give me a clue?' said the captain, eventually.
'It means - '
'We'll just trot along in, if it's all the same to you,' said Nanny Ogg. 'Got a lot of cleaning up to do.' She flourished her broomstick. 'Come, ladies.'
She and Magrat grasped Granny's elbows firmly and propelled her under the archway before her fuse burned out. Granny Weatherwax always held that you ought to count up to ten before losing your temper. No-one knew why, because the only effect of this was to build up the pressure and make the ensuing explosion a whole lot worse.
The witches didn't stop until they were out of sight of the gate.
'Now, Esme,' said Nanny soothingly, 'you shouldn't take it personal. And we are a bit mucky, you must admit. They were just doing their job, all right? How about that?'
'They treated us as if we was ordinary people,' said Granny, in a shocked voice.
'This is foreign parts, Granny,' said Magrat. 'Anyway, you said the men on the boat didn't recognize the hat, either.'
'But then I dint want 'em to,' said Granny. 'That's different.'
'It's just an ... an incident, Granny,' said Magrat. 'They were just stupid soldiers. They don't even know a proper free-form hairstyle when they see it.'
Nanny looked around. Crowds milled past them, almost in silence.
'And you must admit it's a nice clean city,' she said.
They took stock of their surroundings.
It was certainly the cleanest place they'd ever seen. Even the cobblestones had a polished look.
'You could eat your tea off the street,' said Nanny, as they strolled along.
'Yes, but you'd eat your tea off the street anyway,' said Granny.
'I wouldn't eat all of it. Even the gutters are scrubbed. Not a Ronald* in sight, look.'
'Gytha!'
* Ronald the Third of Lancre, believed to be an extremely unpleasant monarch, was remembered by posterity only in this obscure bit of rhyming slang.
'Well, you said that in Ankh-Morpork - '
'This is somewhere else!'
'It's so spotless,' said Magrat. 'Makes you wish you'd cleaned your sandals.'
'Yeah.' Nanny Ogg squinted along the street. 'Makes you wish you were a better person, really.'
'Why are you two whispering?' said Granny.