'Good, eh? That was me. Im the Glingleglingleglingle Fairy.'

     `Get out.'

     'I also do sparkly fairy dust effects that go twing too, if you like...

     `Go away!'

     'How  about "The Bells of  St Ungulant's"?' said the gnome desperately. 'Very seasonal. Very nice. Why not join in? It goes: ''The  bells [clong] of St [clang]... " '

     Ridcully scored  a direct  hit  with  the  rubber  duck, and the  gnome escaped through the bath overflow. Cursing and spontaneous handbell  ringing echoed away down the pipes.

     In perfect peace at last, the Archchancellor pulled off his robe.

     The organ's storage tanks were wheezing at  the rivets by the  time the Librarian  had finished  pumping. Satisfied, he knuckled his  way up to  the seat  and paused to survey, with great satisfaction, the  keyboards in front of him.

     Bloody Stupid Johnson's approach to  music was similar  to his approach in every field that was caressed by his genius in the same way that a potato field is touched by  a late frost. Make it loud, he said. Make it wide. Make it allembracing.  And thus the Great Organ of Unseen University was the only one  in  the  world  where  you  could play  an entire  symphony scored  for thunderstorm and squashed toad noises.

     Warm water cascaded off Mustrum Ridcully's pointy bathing cap.

     Mr Johnson had, surely not on purpose, designed a perfect bathroom - at least, perfect  for singing in. Echoes  and resonating pipeways smoothed out all those little imperfections and gave even the weediest singer a  rolling, dark brown voice.

     And so Ridcully sang.

     ' ...as I walked out one dadadadada for to something or other and to take the dadada, I did espy a fair pretty may-ay-den I think it was, and I...'

     The  organ pipes hummed with pent-up  energy. The Librarian cracked his knuckles. This took some time. Then he pulled the pressure release valve.

     The hum became an urgent thrumming.

     Very carefully, he let in the clutch.

     Ridcully stopped singing as  the tones of  the  organ came  through the wall.

     Bathtime music, eh? he thought. Just the job.

     It was a shame it was muffled by all the bathroom fixtures, though.

     It was at this point he espied a small lever marked `Musical pipes.

     Ridcully, never being a man  to wonder what any kind of switch did when it was so much easier  and quicker  to find out  by pulling  it, did so. But instead of the  music  he was expecting  he was rewarded simply with several large  panels sliding  silently  aside, revealing  row  upon  row  of  brass nozzles.

     The Librarian was lost now, dreaming on the wings  of music. His hands and feet danced over the keyboards,  picking their way towards the crescendo which  ended the first movement  of Bubble's Catastrophe Suite.

     One foot kicked the 'Afterburner' lever and the other spun the valve of the nitrous oxide cylinder.

     Ridcully tapped the nozzles.

     Nothing  happened. He  looked at  the controls again, and realized that he'd never pulled the little brass lever marked 'Organ Interlock`.

     He  did  so.  This  did  not  cause  a  torrent  of  pleasant  bathtime accompaniment, however. There was merely a thud and a distant gurgling which grew in volume.

     He gave up, and went back to soaping his chest.

     '...running of the deer, the playing of... huh? What...'

     Later that day he had the bathroom nailed up again  and a notice placed on the door, on which was written:

     'Not to be used in any circumstances. This is IMPORTANT.'

     However, when Modo nailed the door up he didn't hammer the nails in all the way but left just a  bit sticking up so that his pliers would grip later on,  when  he  was  told  to  remove them.  He never presumed  and  he never complained, he just had a good working knowledge of the wizardly mind.

     They never did find the soap.

     Ponder and his fellow students watched Hex carefully.

     'It can't just, you know, stop,' said Adrian 'Mad Drongo' Tumipseed.

     'The ants are just standing still,' said Ponder. He sighed. 'All right, put the wretched thing back.'

     Adrian carefully  replaced  the  small  fluffy teddy bear  above  Hex's keyboard. Things immediately began to whirr. The ants started to trot again. The mouse squeaked.

     They'd tried this three times.

     Ponder looked again at the single sentence Hex had written.

     +++ Mine! Waaaah +++

     'I don't  actually think,' he said, gloomily, 'that I want to tell  the Archchancellor that this machine stops  working  if we take its fluffy teddy bear away. I just don't think I want to live in that kind of world.'

     'Er,'  said  Mad  Drongo, 'you could always, you  know, sort of  say it needs to work with the FTB enabled...

     'You think that's better?' said Ponder, reluctantly. It wasn't as if it was even a very realistic interpretation of a bear.

     'You mean, better than "fluffy teddy bear"?'

     Ponder nodded. 'It's better,' he said.

     Of all the presents he got  from the Hogfather, Gawain told  Susan, the best of all was the marble.

     And she'd said, what marble?

     And he'd  said, the glass marble I found in  the fireplace. It wins all the games. It seems to move in a different way.

     The  beggars walked their erratic and occasionally  backward walk along the city streets, while fresh morning snow began to fall.

     Occasionally  one of them belched  happily.  They all  wore paper hats, except for Foul Ole Ron, who'd eaten his.

     A tin  can was passed from hand to hand. It contained a mixture of fine wines and spirits and something in a can that Arnold Sideways had stolen from behind a paint factory in Phedre Road.

     'The goose was good,' said the Duck Man, picking his teeth.

     'I'm surprised  you et  it,  what  with that  duck on your  head,' said Coffin Henry, picking his nose.

     'What duck?' said the Duck Man.

     'What were that greasy stuff?' said Arnold Sideways.

     'That, my  dear  fellow, was pвtй de foie gras. All the way from Genua, I'll wager. And very good, too.'

     'Dun' arf make you fart, don't it?'

     'Ah, the world of haute cuisine,' said the Duck Man happily.

     They reached, by fits and starts, the back door of their favourite restaurant. The Duck Man looked at it dreamily, eyes filmy with recollection.

     'I used to dine here almost every night,' he said.

    'Why'd you stop?' said Coffin Henry.

     'I... I don't  really know,' said the Duck Man. 'It's... rather a blur, I'm afraid. Back in the days when I... think I was someone else. But still,' he said, patting Arnold's head, 'as they  say,  "Better a meal of  old boots where friendship is, than  a  stalled ox  and  hatred  therewith."  Forward, please, Ron.'

     They positioned Foul Ole Ron in front of the back door and then knocked on  it. When a waiter opened it Foul  Ole Ron grinned at him,  exposing what remained of his teeth and his famous halitosis, which was still all there.

     'Millennium hand and shrimp!' he said, touching his forelock.

     ' "Compliments of the season",' the Duck Man translated.

     The man went to shut the door but Arnold Sideways was ready for him and had wedged his boot in the crack.[25]