Mrs. Cake led with an answer.
“I’m not your good woman!” she snapped.
“And who are you, my good woman?” said the Archchancellor.
“Well, that’s no way to talk to a respectable person,” said Mrs. Cake.
“There’s no need to be offended,” said Ridcully.
“Oh blow, is that what I’m doin’?” said Mrs. Cake.
“Madam, why are you answering me before I’ve even said something?”
“What?”
“What d’you mean?”
“What do you mean?”
“What?”
They stared at one another, fixed in an unbreakable conversational deadlock. Then Mrs. Cake realized.
“Oi’m prematurely premoniting again,” she said. She stuck a finger in her ear and wiggled it around with a squelching noise. “It’s all orlright now. Now, the reason—”
But Ridcully had had enough.
“Bursar,” he said, “give this woman a penny and send her about her business, will you?”
“What?” said Mrs. Cake, suddenly enraged beyond belief.
&nb
sp; “There’s too much of this sort of thing these days,” said Ridcully to the Dean, as they strolled away.
“It’s the pressures and stresses of living in a big city,” said the Senior Wrangler. “I read that somewhere. It takes people in a funny way.”
They stepped through the wicket gate in one of the big doors and the Dean shut it in Mrs. Cake’s face.
“He might not come,” said the Senior Wrangler, as they crossed the quadrangle. “He didn’t come for poor old Windle’s farewell party.”
“He’ll come for the Rite,” said Ridcully. “It doesn’t just send him an invitation, it puts a bloody RSVP on it!”
“Oh, good. I like sherry,” said the Bursar.
“Shut up, Bursar.”
There was an alley, somewhere in the Shades, which was the most alley-ridden part of an alley-ridden city.
Something small and shiny rolled into it, and vanished in the darkness.
After a while, there were faint metallic noises.
The atmosphere in the Archchancellor’s study was very cold.
Eventually the Bursar quavered: “Maybe he’s busy?”
“Shut up,” said the wizards, in unison.