“But, Dad, there’s a bum sticking out of the window of the elf van, so it has to be an elf bum.”

“Look, I told you: don’t use the word b—”

At which point the boy’s dad looked to his right and was treated to the sight of a pale bottom hanging in the wind, alongside which were a number of small people making faces at him.

“Call the police, Ethel,” he said. He shook his fist in the general direction of faces and bottom. “You little horrors!” he shouted.

“Nyaahhhh!” shouted a dwarf in return, and stuck his tongue out as the van sped away.

“See, I was right,” said the driver’s son. “It was an elf. And a bum.”

• • •

Inside the van, Mr. Merryweather was trying to keep his eyes on the road while ignoring all that was going on in the back.

“Cold out there,” said Jolly, the leader of the group, as he pulled his bottom from the window and made himself look decent again. The rest of his companions, Dozy, Angry, and Mumbles, took their seats and began opening bottles of Spiggit’s Old Peculiar. The air in the van, which hadn’t smelled particularly pleasant to begin with, now took on the odor of a factory devoted to producing unwashed socks and fish heads.13 Curiously, this very strong, and very unpleasant, beer appeared to have little effect on the dwarfs apart from exaggerating their natural character traits. Thus Jolly became jollier, in a drunken, unsettling way; Angry became angrier; Dozy became sleepier; and Mumbles—well, he just became more unintelligible.

“Oi, Merryweather,” called Angry. “When do we get paid?”

Mr. Merryweather’s hands tightened on the wheel. He was a fat, bald man in a light brown check suit, and he always wore a red bow tie. He looked like someone who should be managing a bunch of untrustworthy dwarfs, but whether he looked that way because of what he was, or he was what he was because he looked that way, we will never know.

“Paid for what?” said Mr. Merryweather.

“For today’s work, that’s what for.”

The van swerved on the motorway as Mr. Merryweather briefly lost control of the wheel, and of himself.

“Work?” he said. “Work? You lot don’t know the meaning of work.”

“Careful!” called Dozy. “You nearly spilled my beer.”

“I. Don’t. Care!” screamed Mr. Merryweather.

“What did he say?” asked Jolly. “Someone was shouting, so I didn’t hear.”

“Says he doesn’t care,” said Dozy.

“Oh, well, that’s just lovely, that is. After all we’ve done for him—”

The van came to a violent skidding halt by the side of the road. Mr. Merryweather stood and glared furiously at the assembled dwarfs.