In Which Howl Goes to a Funeral In Disguise
- Michael comes back from Market Chipping wearing the magic cloak that makes up his red-bearded-guy disguise.
- He has good news for Howl: he's found an empty shop that they can move the castle to, to hide from the Witch.
- It's an empty shop in Market Chipping—a place that was once a hat shop. (Sound familiar?)
- Howl is the most pathetic, self-pitying, impossible sick person in the world, but still he keeps coming downstairs to ask Sophie's opinion about what their new place should look like.
- Howl leaves the house in the red-beard-disguise cloak; when he returns, he says that he has bought the shop.
- Michael is happy as a clam: he gets to see Lettie every day.
- Howl wants to go to Mrs. Pentstemmon's funeral, so he gives his gray-and-red (magic, attractive) suit to Sophie to clean—and she quickly cuts it into seven pieces to keep Howl from using it to enchant girls.
- Once she finishes mending the blue suit, she realizes that it's somehow gotten tiny, so she asks Michael to use his magic to make it bigger.
- Michael made the spell a tiny bit too strong though, and when Howl comes out of his room sometime later with the suit, it's become miles long.
- He insists on taking the seven pieces of magic gray-and-red suit from Sophie so that he can fix them.
- As Howl is getting ready for the funeral, the blue suit just keeps spreading across the floor, getting bigger and bigger.
- When Howl comes out of the bathroom, he's dressed all in black with black hair.
- But even though he looks ready for a funeral, he can't just go out with his regular face—not with the Witch of the Waste after him.
- He transforms himself into a dog to practice his disguise.
- Sophie asks why he made all this fuss about his suit when he's going to the funeral as a dog anyway.
- Howl wants to show Mrs. Pentstemmon his respect, especially since she was a lady who paid attention to the details.
- Howl sets off.