'You sent a raw recruit out with Nobby?' said Vimes wearily.
Colon stuttered. 'Well, sir, experienced man, I thought, Corporal Nobbs could teach him a lot…'
'Let's just hope he's a slow learner, ' said Vimes, ramming his brown iron helmet on his head. 'Come on. '
When they stepped out of the Watch House there was a ladder against the tavern wall. A bulky man at the top of it swore under his breath as he wrestled with the illuminated sign.
'It's the E that doesn't work properly, ' Vimes called up.
'What?'
'The E. And the T sizzles when it rains. It's about time it was fixed. '
'Fixed? Oh. Yes. Fixed. That's what I'm doing all right. Fixing. '
The Watch men splashed off through the puddles.
Brother Watchtower shook his head slowly, and turned his attention once again to his screwdriver.
...
Men like Corporal Nobbs can be found in every armed force. Although their grasp of the minutiae of the Regulations is usually encyclopedic, they take good care never to be promoted beyond, perhaps, corporal. He tended to speak out of the corner of his mouth. He smoked incessantly but the weird thing, Carrot noticed, was that any cigarette smoked by Nobby became a dog-end almost instantly but remained a dog-end indefinitely or until lodged behind his ear, which was a sort of nicotine Elephant's Graveyard. On the rare occasions he took one out of his mouth he held it cupped in his hand.
He was a small, bandy-legged man, with a certain resemblance to a chimpanzee who never got invited to tea parties.
His age was indeterminate. But in cynicism and general world weariness, which is a sort of carbon dating of the personality, he was about seven thousand years old.
'A cushy number, this route, ' he said, as they strolled along a damp street in the merchants' quarter. He tried a door handle. It was locked. 'You stick with me, ' he added, 'and I'll see you're all right. Now, you try the handles on the other side of the street. '
'Ah. I understand, Corporal Nobbs. We've got to see if anyone's left their store unlocked, ' said Carrot.
'You catch on fast, son. '
'I hope I can apprehend a miscreant in the act, ' said Carrot zealously.
'Er, yeah, ' said Nobby, uncertainly.
'But if we find a door unlocked I suppose we must summon the owner, ' Carrot went on. 'And one of us would have to stay to guard things, right?'
'Yeah?' Nobby brightened. 'I'll do that, ' he said. 'Don't you worry about it. Then you could go and find the victim. Owner, I mean. '
He tried another doorknob. It turned under his grip.
'Back in the mountains, ' said Carrot, 'if a thief was caught, he was hung up by the-'
He paused, idly rattling a doorknob.
Nobby froze.
'By the what?' he said, in horrified fascination.
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