“Right.”
“Find out anything?” said Nanny
“Half a dozen people have been going up there. Every full moon!” said Granny. “Gels, by the shape of them. You only see silhouettes, with bats.”
“You done well there,” said Nanny, carefully. “Girls from round here, you reckon?”
“Got to be. They ain't using broomsticks.”
Nanny Ogg sighed.
“There's Agnes Nitt, old Threepenny's daughter,” she said. “And the Tockley girl. And some others.”
Granny Weatherwax looked at her with her mouth open.
“I asked our Jason,” she said. “Sorry.”
The bat burped. Granny genteelly covered her hand with her mouth.
“I'm a silly old fool, ain't I?” she said, after a while.
“No, no,” said Nanny. “Borrowing's a real skill. You're really good at it.”
“Prideful, that's what I am. Once upon a time I'd of thought of asking people, too, instead of fooling around being a bat.”
“Our Jason wouldn't have told you. He only told me 'cos I would've made 'is life a living hell if he didn't,” said Nanny Ogg. “That's what a mother's for.”
“I'm losing my touch, that's what it is. Getting old, Gytha.”
“You're as old as you feel, that's what I always say.”
“That's what I mean.”
Nanny Ogg looked worried.
“Supposing Magrat'd been here,” said Granny. “She'd see me being daft.”
“Well, she's safe in the castle,” said Nanny. “Learning how to be queen.”
“At least the thing about queening,” said Granny, “is that no one notices if you're doing it wrong. It has to be right 'cos it's you doing it.”
“S'funny, royalty,” said Nanny. “It's like magic. You take some girl with a bum like two pigs in a blanket and a head full of air and then she marries a king or a prince or someone and suddenly she's this radiant right royal princess. It's a funny old world.”
“I ain't going to kowtow to her, mind,” said Granny.
“You never kowtow to anyone anyway,” said Nanny Ogg patiently. “You never bowed to the old king. You barely gives young Verence a nod. You never kowtows to anyone ever, anyway.”
“That's right!” said Granny. “That's part of being a witch, that is.”
Nanny relaxed a bit. Granny being an old woman made her uneasy. Granny in her normal state of barely controlled anger was far more her old self.
Granny stood up.
“Old Toekley's girl, eh?”
“That's right.”
“Her mother was a Keeble, wasn't she? Fine woman, as I recall.”