Moist sought for sanity in ugg boots cheap sale the wrinkled face opposite him. The unkempt beard was streaked with different colours, either of dirt, tea or random celestial pigment. Like some hermit, he thought. Only a hermit could wear a wig like that.
     ‘Sorry?’ he said. ‘And you mean that shoving someone’s letter under the floorboards for a hundred years isn’t tampering with it?’
     Groat suddenly looked wretched. The beard quivered. Then he started to cough, great hacking, wooden, crackling lumps of cough, that made the jars shake and caused a uggs discount yellow mist to rise from his trouser bottoms, “scuse me a moment, sir,’ he wheezed, between hacks, and he fumbled in his pocket for a scratched and battered tin. ‘You suck at all, sir?’ he said, tears rolling down his cheeks. He proffered the tin to Moist. ‘They’re Number Threes, sir. Very mild. I make ‘em meself, sir. Nat’ral remedies from nat’ral ingredients, that’s my style, sir. Got to keep the tubes clear, sir, otherwise they discount uggs for women turn against you.’
     Moist took a large, violet lozenge from the box and sniffed it. It smelled faintly of aniseed.
     ‘Thank you, Mr Groat,’ he said, but in case this counted as an attempt at bribery, he added sternly: ‘The mail, Mr Groat? Sticking undelivered mail wherever there’s a space isn’t tampering with it?’
     ‘That’s more . . . delaying the mail, sir. Just, er . . . slowing it down. A bit. It’s not like there’s any intention buy uggs online cheap of never delivering it, sir.’
     Moist stared at Groat’s worried expression. He felt that sense of shifting ground you experience when you realize that you’re dealing with someone whose world is connected with your own only by their fingertips. Not a hermit, he thought, more like a shipwrecked mariner, living in this dry desert island of a building while the world outside moves on and all sanity evaporates.
     ‘Mr Groat, I don’t want to, you know, upset you ugg boots cheap sale or anything, but there’s thousands of letters out there under a thick layer of pigeon guano . . .’ he said slowly.
     ‘Actually, on that score, sir, things aren’t as bad as they seem,’ Groat said, and paused to suck noisily on his natural cough lozenge. ‘It’s very dry stuff, pigeon doings, and forms quite a hard protective crust on the envelopes . . .’