I left it where it was. Green things tended to wither in my company. Milk sours, children cry, cats develop hairballs. I’d have made one hell of a mother, believe me.

“Go on,” I said to her, refusing to touch the plant.

She fussed at the clasp of a garish carpetbag, making sure I saw the handsome obsidian rings on her chafed hands.

Not too old for romance, I guessed, though beyond child-bearing years. Not twitchy enough to be in legal trouble. Too stout to be vexed by a wasting illness. “An eminence named Peerless Thropp,” I said, to get a hold of anything. “I’m not quite sure about eminences. I have never been to Munchkinland.”

“An eminence is the senior member of the local governing family. Munchkinland has maybe a dozen or so established families, don’t you know, and the Thropps are the most prominent. The Eminent Thropp is superior in station to all other Munchkinlander gentry. I believe the term Eminence is specific to Munchkinland, though I can’t be certain. I have never traveled much. Happy at home, you see.” She grimaced. “Quite happy indeed.”

So we were getting somewhere. “Peerless Thropp is still alive-?”

“Yes. A widower. So he’s the Eminent Thropp. More or less the governor of Munchkinland. One daughter, Lady Partra, who married and bore two daughters of her own, Sophelia Thropp and Melena Thropp. I helped raise them both. The former went mad, in the most respectable way, and is housed offstage. The latter, Melena, I did with what I could. High spirits, that one.”

A decayed gentlewoman of loose morals, I inferred. “Go on.”

“Melena could have had anyone, but she suffered chronically from spite. To vex her family was her chiefest aim. She refused an alliance with another eminence’s son, as Lady Partra had proposed. Instead, Melena eloped with a minister of the unionist faith. The husband is far beneath her. Frexspar, his name. As if it matters. As if he matters. Stationed in the hardscrabble outback of Wend Hardings.”

Yes, I remember this all. As if it were yesterday. But you must consider that my mind wasn’t stuffed with eighty years of my own memories. There was little to displace.

The Nanny enjoyed reciting genealogies. “Melena is the Thropp Second Descending, you see-she will become Eminence when her grandfather and her mother are both dead. The honor passes through the female line, just as with the Ozmas. This is assuming, of course, that her mad Aunt Sophelia doesn’t rap out a claim to the title and the family seat, et cetera. Few think she’s capable,” observed Nanny, “but in any instance she has no issue, so sooner or later the title will revert to Melena Thropp.”

All this palaver. “Why have you come, Miss Spunge?”

“Call me Nanny.”

I resisted the invitation. She continued. “My sweet Melena, the Thropp Second Descending, is still young and fertile. I want some salve, some charm, some hedge to ensure that any second child would be born-without blemish.”