He also piddled on one of the turnips for the same reason, although only metaphorically, because when you are a small skeleton in a black robe there are also some things you technically cannot do.Then he leapt down from the table and left sherry-flavored footprints all the way to the tree that stood in a pot in the corner. It was really only a bare branch of oak, but so much shiny holly and mistletoe had been wired onto it that it gleamed in the light of the candles.There was tinsel on it, and glittering ornaments, and small bags of chocolate money.The Death of Rats peered at his hugely distorted reflection in a glass ball, and then looked up at the mantelpiece.He reached it in one jump, and ambled curiously through the cards that had been ranged along it. His gray whiskers twitched at messages like “Wishing you Joye and all Goode Cheer at Hogswatchtime & All Through The Yeare.” A couple of them had pictures of a big jolly fat man carrying a sack. In one of them he was riding in a sleigh drawn by four enormous pigs.The Death of Rats sniffed at a couple of long stockings that had been hung from the mantelpiece, over the fireplace in which a fire had died down to a few sullen ashes.He was aware of a subtle tension in the air, a feeling that here was a scene that was also a stage, a round hole, as it were, waiting for a round peg—There was a scraping noise.
