'Us could do with a new anvil down forge,' he volunteered.
* Granny Weatherwax had once pressed him about this, and since there are no secrets from a witch, he'd shyly replied, 'Well, ma'am, what happens is, I gets hold of 'un and smacks 'un between the eyes with hammer before 'un knows what's 'appening, and then I whispers in his ear, I sez, “Cross me, you bugger, and I'll have thy goolies on t'anvil, thou knows I can.”'
'If I come back rich, you won't never have to go down the forge ever again,' said Nanny.
Jason frowned.
'But I likes t'forge,' he said, slowly.
Nanny looked momentarily taken aback. 'Well, then -then you shall have an anvil made of solid silver.'
'Wunt be no good, ma. It'd be too soft,' said Jason.
'If I brings you back an anvil made of solid silver you shall have an anvil made of solid silver, my lad, whether you likes it or not!'
Jason hung his huge head. 'Yes, mum,' he said.
'You see to it that someone comes in to keep the house aired every day reg'lar,' said Nanny. 'I want a fire lit in that grate every morning.'
'Yes, mum.'
'And everyone's to go in through the back door, you hear? I've put a curse on the front porch. Where's those girls got to with my luggage?' She scurried off, a small grey bantam scolding a flock of hens.
PS It has tendincy to resett to pumpkins but you will gett the hange of it in noe time.'
Magrat looked at the mirror again. And then down at the wand.
One minute life is simple, and then suddenly it stretches away full of complications.
'Oh, my,' she said. 'I'm a fairy godmother!'
Granny Weatherwax was still standing staring at the crazily-webbed fragments when Nanny Ogg ran in.
'Esme Weatherwax, what have you done? That's bad luck, that is ... Esme?'
'Her? Her?'
'Are you all right?'
Granny Weatherwax screwed up her eyes for a moment, and then shook her head as if trying to dislodge an unthinkable thought.
'What?'
'You've gone all pale. Never seen you go all pale like that before.'
Granny slowly removed a fragment of glass from her hat.
'Well... bit of a turn, the glass breaking like that. . .' she mumbled.
Nanny looked at Granny Weatherwax's hand. It was bleeding. Then she looked at Granny Weatherwax's face, and decided that she'd never admit that she'd looked at Granny Weatherwax's hand.
'Could be a sign,' she said, randomly selecting a safe topic. 'Once someone dies, you get that sort of thing. Pictures fallin' off walls, clocks stopping . . . great big wardrobes falling down the stairs . . . that sort of thing.'
'I've never believed in that stuff, it's . . . what do you mean, wardrobes falling down the stairs?' said Granny. She was breathing deeply. If it wasn't well known that Granny Weatherwax was tough, anyone might have thought she had just had the shock of her life and was practically desperate to take part in a bit of ordinary everyday bickering.
'That's what happened after my Great-Aunt Sophie died,' said Nanny Ogg. 'Three days and four hours and six minutes to the very minute after she died, her wardrobe fell down the stairs. Our Darren and our Jason were trying to get it round the bend and it sort of slipped, just like that. Uncanny. Weeell, I wasn't going to leave it there for her Agatha, was I, only ever visited her mum on Hogswatchday, and it was me that nursed Sophie all the way through to the end - '
Granny let the familiar, soothing litany of Nanny Ogg's family feud wash over her as she groped for the teacups.