'I certainly notice you always fiddle around with your pipe when you're thinking thoughts you don't much like,' said Agnes. 'It's displacement activity.'

Through a cloud of sweet-smelling smoke Nanny reflected that Agnes read books. All the witches who'd lived in her cottage were bookish types. They thought you could see life through books but you couldn't, the reason being that the words got in the way.

'She has been a bit quiet, that's true,' she said. 'Best to let her get on with it.'

'I thought perhaps she was sulking about the priest who'll be doing the Naming,' said Agnes.

'Oh, old Brother Perdore's all right,' said Nanny. 'Gabbles away in some ancient lingo, keeps it short and then you just give him sixpence for his trouble, fill him up with brandy and load him on his donkey and off he goes.'

'What? Didn't you hear?' said Agnes. 'He's laid up over in Skund. Broke his wrist and both legs falling off the donkey.'

Nanny Ogg took her pipe out of her mouth.

'Why wasn't I told?' she said.

'I don't know, Nanny. Mrs Weaver told me yesterday.'

'Oo, that woman! I passed her in the street this morning! She could've said!'

Nanny poked her pipe back in her mouth as though stabbing all uncommunicative gossips. 'How can you break both your legs falling off a donkey?'

'It was going up that little path on the side of Skund Gorge. He fell sixty feet.'

'Oh? Well... that's a tall donkey, right enough.'

'So the King sent down to the Omnian mission in Ohulan to send us up a priest, apparently,' said Agnes.

'He did what?' said Nanny.

A small grey tent was inexpertly pitched in a field just outside the town. The rising wind made it flap, and tore at the poster which had been pinned on to an easel outside.

It read: GOOD NEWS! Om Welcomes You!!!

In fact no one had turned up to the small introductory service that Mightily Oats had organized that afternoon, but since he had announced one he had gone ahead with it anyway, singing a few cheerful hymns to his own accompaniment on the small portable harmonium and then preaching a very short sermon to the wind and the sky.