Sophie was not the only one to be scared. The few people about that early were running away from the scarecrow as hard as they could run. But the scarecrow took no notice and hopped on.

Sophie hid her face from it. “We’re not here!” she told it in a fierce whisper. “You don’t know we’re here! You can’t find us. Hop away fast!”

The clump, clump of the hopping stick slowed as the scarecrow neared the shop. Sophie wanted to scream for Howl, but all she seemed to be able to do was to go on repeating, “We’re not here. Go away quickly!”

And the hop-hopping speeded up, just as she told it to, and the scarecrow hopped its way past the shop and on through Market Chipping. Sophie thought she was going to come over queer. But she seemed just to have been holding her breath. She took a deep breath and felt shaky with relief. If the scarecrow came back, she could send it away again.

Howl had gone out when Sophie went into the castle room. “He seemed awfully upset,” Michael said. Sophie looked at the door. The knob was black-down. Not that upset! she thought.

Michael went out too, to Cesari’s, that morning, and Sophie was alone in the shop. It was very hot. The flowers wilted in spite of the spells, and very few people seemed to want to buy any. What with this, and the mandrake root, and the scarecrow, all Sophie’s feelings seemed to come to a head. She was downright miserable.

“It may be the curse hovering to catch up with Howl,” she sighed to the flowers, “but I think it’s being the eldest, really. Look at me! I set out to seek my fortune and I end up exactly where I started, and old as the hills still!”

Here the dog-man put his glossy red snout round the door to the yard and whined. Sophie sighed. Never an hour passed without the creature checking up on her. “Yes, I’m still here,” she said. “Where did you expect me to be?”

The dog came inside the shop. He sat up and stretched his paws out stiffly in front of him. Sophie realized he was trying to turn into a man. Poor creature. She tried to be nice to him because he was, after all, worse off than she was.

“Try harder,” she said. “Put your back into it. You can be a man if you want.”

The dog stretched and straightened his back, and strained and strained. And just as Sophie was sure he was going to have to give up or topple over backward, he managed to rise to his hind legs and heave himself up into a distraught, ginger-haired man.

“I envy—Howl,” he panted. “Does that—so easily. I was—dog in the hedge—you helped. Told Lettie—I knew you—I’d keep watch. I was—here before in—” He began to double up again into a dog and howled with annoyance. “With Witch in shop!” he wailed, and fell forward onto his hands, growing a great deal of gray and white hair as he did so.