'No, no, you don't say that,' said Magrat. She shouldered her way past, and tapped on the door. 'Excuse me! Bona fide travellers!'
'Bona what?' said Nanny.
'That's what you need to say,' said Magrat. 'Any inn has got to open up for bona fide travellers and give them succour.'
'Has it?' said Nanny, with interest. 'That sounds like a thing worth knowing.'
The door remained shut.
'Let me 'ave a go,' said Nanny. 'I know some foreign lingo.'
She hammered on the door.
'Openny vous, gunga din, chop-chop, pretty damn quick,' she said.
Granny Weatherwax listened carefully.
'That's speaking foreign, is it?'
'My grandson Shane is a sailor,' said Nanny Ogg. 'You'd be amazed, the words he learns about foreign parts.'
'I expects I would,' said Granny. 'And I 'opes they works better for him.'
She thumped on the door again. And this time it opened, very slowly. A pale face peered around it.
'Excuse me - ' Magrat began.
Granny pushed the door open. The face's owner had been leaning on it; they could hear the scrape of his boots over the floor as he was shoved gently backwards.
'Blessings be on this house,' Granny said, perfunctorily. It was always a good opening remark for a witch. It concentrated people's minds on what other things might be on this house, and reminded them about any fresh cakes, newly-baked bread or bundles of useful old clothing that might have temporarily escaped their minds.
It looked like one of the other things had been on this house already.
It was an inn, of sorts. The three witches had never seen such a cheerless place in their lives. But it was quite crowded. A score or more pale-faced people watched them solemnly from benches around the walls.
Nanny Ogg sniffed.
'Cor,' she said. 'Talk about garlic!' And, indeed, bunches of it hung from every beam. 'You can't have too much garlic, I always say. I can see I'm going to like it here.'
She nodded to a white-faced man behind the bar.
'Gooden day, big-feller mine host! Trois beers pour favour avec us, silver plate.'
'What's a silver plate got to do with it?' demanded Granny.
'It's foreign for please,' said Nanny.
'I bet it isn't really,' said Granny. 'You're just making it up as you goes along.'
The innkeeper, who worked on the fairly simple principle that anyone walking through the door wanted something to drink, drew three beers.
'See?' said Nanny, triumphantly.
'I don't like the way everyone's looking at us,' said Magrat, as Nanny babbled on to the perplexed man in her very own esperanto. 'A man over there grinned at me.'
Granny Weatherwax sat down on a bench, endeavouring to position herself so that as small an amount of her body as possible was in contact with the wood, in case being foreign was something you could catch.
'There,' said Nanny, bustling up with a tray, 'nothing to it. I just cussed at him until he understood.'