The old homestead in the forest was all that Moist had expected, and Mrs Wesley burst into tears when he told her about Harry’s offer. She was determined to think of Sir Harry as a saint or angel and if Moist knew anything about the ways of the world Harry’s gesture would be all over the forest within hours; and because news spreads, it would get as far as Ankh-Morpork by the end of the day. Moist knew Harry the man as he was: extremely sharp with a heart of gold and tears of soppy. Harry’s gesture was entirely Harry, with no ulterior motive, but nevertheless once the news had got around, he would be in all the papers as a benefactor of the poor and therefore a celebrity. Not for the first time Moist deplored his own tendency to see the angles in whatever happened, good or bad.

‘How much?’

The simple question sounded like a declaration of war, which it almost was, as Harry was presented with the costings for the express line to Bonk.

Moist stood his ground. ‘Dick says there’s iron everywhere, Harry, but it needs digging out and then it’s the making of the steel that uses up the money,’ he put in hastily, before Harry could throw anyone down the stairs.

‘You’ve got to put the gold in to get t’steel out, Harry,’ said Simnel calmly. ‘We’ve been getting a good deal from the lads down at the smelters, but it’s twelve hundred miles to Uberwald, and that’s a lot of steel.’

‘Harry,’ Moist said patiently. ‘I know very well that when you and your lady first married you used to cut the matches in half to make them last longer. But you are not that man any more. You can afford this.’

They watched Harry’s face. In truth, Moist knew Harry had kicked his way up from the gutter and was proud of it, but he had made his money cheaply – since minions, on the whole, don’t incur much of an overhead – and looked at every suggestion that he should pay for anything as evidence that something was wrong in the world.

Dick Simnel had got the measure of the man and said, ‘If I was you, sir, I’d look at my money box and buy as much steel as I possibly could while I can, not making a big fuss about it, otherwise it’ll suddenly get more expensive, if you know what I mean. Supply and demand.’

Harry still looked as if he thought people were trying to get something of a move on him, which was his ground state of being, and Moist thought, well, what does Harry spend his mountains of money on?