Going Postal

right? It might just happen, yes?
    And this was known as that greatest of treasures, which is Hope. It was a good way of getting poorer really very quickly, and staying poor. It could be you. But it wouldn’t be.
    Now Moist von Lipwig headed along Attic Bee Street, toward the Lady Sybil Free Hospital. Heads turned as went past. He hadn’t been off the front page for days, after all. He just had to hope that the wingéd hat and golden suit were the ultimate in furniture; people saw the gold, not the face.
    The hospital was still being built, as all hospitals are, but it had its own queue at the entrance. Moist dealt with that by ignoring it, and going straight in. There were, in the main hallway, people who looked like the kind of people whose job it is to say “Oi, you!” when other people just wander in, but Moist generated his personal “I’m too important to be stopped” field, and they never quite managed to frame the words.
    And, of course, once you got past the doorway demons of any organization, people just assumed you had a right to be there, and gave you directions.
    Mr. Groat was in a room by himself; a sign on the door said DO NOT ENTER , but Moist seldom bothered about that sort of thing.
    The old man was sitting up in bed, looking gloomy, but he beamed as soon as he saw Moist.
    “Mr. Lipwig! You’re a sight for sore eyes, sir! Can you find out where they’ve hid my trousers? I told them I was fit as a flea, sir, but they went and hid my trousers! Help me out of here before they carry me away to another bath, sir. A bath , sir!”
    “They have to carry you?” said Moist. “Can’t you walk, Tolliver?
    “Yessir, but I fights ’em, fights ’em, sir. A bath, sir? From wimmin? Oggling at my trumpet-and-skittles? I call that shameless! Everyone knows soap kills the natural effulgences, sir! Oh, sir! They’re holdin’ me pris’ner , sir! They gived me a trouserectomy, sir!”
    “Please calm down, Mr. Groat,” said Moist urgently. The old man had gone quite red in the face. “You’re all right, then?”
    “Just a scratch, sir, look…” Groat unfastened the buttons of his nightshirt. “See?” he said triumphantly.
    Moist nearly fainted. The banshee had tried to make a tic-tac-toe board out of the man’s chest. Someone else had stitched it neatly.
    “Nice job of work, I’ll give them that,” Groat said grudgingly. “But I’ve got to be up and doing, sir, up and doing!”
    “Are you sure you’re all right?” said Moist, staring at the mess of scabs.
    “Right as rain, sir. I told ’em, sir, if a banshee can’t get at me through my chest protector, none of their damn invisible little biting demons are going to manage it. I bet it’s all going wrong, sir, with Aggy bossing people around? I bet it is! I bet you really need me, right, sir?”
    “Um, yes,” said Moist. “Are they giving you medicine?”
    “Hah, they call it medicine, sir. They gave me a lot of ol’ mumbo-pocus about it being wonderful stuff, but it’s got neither taste nor smell, if you want my opinion. They say it’ll do me good but I told ’em it’s hard work that does me good, sir, not sitting in soapy water with young wimmin lookin’ at my rattle-and-flute. And they took my hair away. They called it unhygenic, sir! What a nerve! All right, it moves about a bit of its own accord, but that’s only natural. I’ve had my hair a long time, sir, I’m used to its funny little ways!”
    “Hwhat is going on here?” said a voice full of offended ownership.
    Moist turned.
    If one of the rules that should be passed on to a young man is “Don’t get mixed up with crazy girls who smoke like a bellows,” another one should be “Run away from any woman who pronounces ‘what’ with two H s.”
    This woman might have been two women. She certainly had the cubic capacity and, since she was dressed entirely in white, looked rather like an iceberg. But chillier. And with sails. And with a headdress starched to a cutting edge.
    Two smaller women stood behind and on either side of her, in definite danger of being crushed if she stepped backwards.
    “I’ve come to see Mr. Groat,” said Moist weakly, while Groat gibbered and pulled the bedclothes over his head.
    “ Quite impossible! I am the matron here, young man, and I must insist that you leave at once! Mr. Groat is in an extremely unstable condition.”
    “He seems fine to me,” said Moist.
    He had to admire the look the matron gave him. It suggested that