Michael came cheerfully down and worked on his spell again. He was so happy that he was joining in Calcifer’s saucepan song and chatting to the skull just as Sophie did, while he worked. “We’re going to live in Market Chipping,” he told the skull. “I can go and see my Lettie every day.”

“Is that why you told Howl about the shop?” Sophie asked, threading her needle. By this time she was on her eighty-ninth triangle.

“Yes,” Michael said happily. “Lettie told me about it when we were wondering how we’d ever see one another again. I told her—”

He was interrupted by Howl, trailing downstairs in his quilt again. “This is positively my last appearance,” Howl croaked. “I forgot to say that Mrs. Pentstemmon is being buried tomorrow on her estate near Porthaven and I shall need this suit cleaned.” He brought the gray-and-scarlet suit out from inside his coverlet and dropped it on Sophie’s lap. “You’re attending to the wrong suit,” he told Sophie. “This is the one I like, but I haven’t the energy to clean it myself.”

“You don’t need to go to the funeral, do you?” Michael said anxiously.

“I wouldn’t dream of staying away,” said Howl. “Mrs. Pentstemmon made me the wizard I am. I have to pay my respects.”

“But your cold’s worse,” said Michael.

“He’s made it worse,” said Sophie, “by getting up and chasing around.”

Howl at once put on his noblest expression. “I’ll be all right,” he croaked, “as long as I keep out of the sea wind. It’s a bitter place, the Pentstemmon estate. The trees are all bent sideways and there’s no shelter for miles.”

Sophie knew he was just playing for sympathy. She snorted.

“And what about the Witch?” Michael asked.

Howl coughed piteously. “I shall go in disguise, probably as another corpse,” he said, trailing back toward the stairs.

“Then you need a winding sheet and not this suit,” Sophie called after him. Howl trailed away upstairs without answering and Sophie did not protest. She now had the charmed suit in her hands and it was too good a chance to miss. She took up her scissors and hacked the gray-and-scarlet suit into seven jagged pieces. That ought to discourage Howl from wearing it. Then she got to work on the last triangles of the blue-and-silver suit, mostly little fragments from round the neck. It was now very small indeed. It looked as if it might be a size too small even for Mrs. Pentstemmon’s page boy.

“Michael,” she said. “Hurry up with that spell. It’s urgent.”

“I won’t be long now,” Michael said.

Half an hour later he checked things off on his list and said he thought he was ready. He came over to Sophie carrying a tiny bowl with a very small amount of green powder in the bottom. “Where do you want it?”

“Here,” said Sophie, snipping off the last threads. She pushed the sleeping dog-man aside and laid the child-sized suit carefully on the floor. Michael, quite as carefully, tipped the bowl and sprinkled powder on every inch of it.