Although Ditte’s real name was Edith, when I was very small I struggled to say it. There were other ways to say her name, she’d said, and she let me choose my favourite. In Denmark she would be called Ditte. Ditte is sweeter, I sometimes thought, enjoying the rhyme. I never called her Edith again.

“Now, let’s see how Ditte has defined service,” Da said.

A lot of the definitions described Lizzie, but none of them explained why service might mean something different for her and for me. The last pile we looked at had no top-slip.

“They’re duplicates,” Da said. He helped me read them.

“What will happen to them?” I asked. But before Da could answer, the Scriptorium door opened and one of the assistants came in, knotting his tie as if he had only just put it on. When he was done it sat crooked, and he forgot to tuck it into his waistcoat.

Mr. Mitchell looked over my shoulder at the piles of slips laid out on the sorting table. A wave of dark hair fell across his face. He smoothed it back but there wasn’t enough oil to hold it.

“Service,” he said.

“Lizzie’s in service,” I said.

“So she is.”

“But Da says it would be unfortunate for me to be in service.”

Mr. Mitchell looked at Da, who shrugged and smiled.

“When you grow up, Esme, I think you could do whatever you wanted to do,” Mr. Mitchell said.

“I want to be a lexicographer.”

“Well, this is a good start,” he said, pointing to all the slips.

Mr. Maling and Mr. Balk came into the Scriptorium, discussing a word they had been arguing about the day before. Then Dr. Murray came in, his black gown billowing. I looked from one man to another and wondered if I could tell how old they were from the length and colour of their beards. Da’s and Mr. Mitchell’s were the shortest and darkest. Dr. Murray’s was turning white and reached all the way to the top button of his waistcoat. Mr. Maling’s and Mr. Balk’s were somewhere in-between. Now they were all there, it was time for me to disappear. I crawled beneath the sorting table and watched for stray slips. I wanted more than anything for another word to find me. None did, but when Da told me to run along with Lizzie my pockets were not completely empty.

I showed Lizzie the slip. “Another secret,” I said.

“Should I be letting you bring secrets out of the Scrippy?”

“Da said this one is a duplicate. There’s another one that says exactly the same thing.”

“What does it say?”

“That you should be in service and I should do needlepoint until a gentleman wants to marry me.”

“Really? It says that?”

“I think so.”

“Well, I could teach you needlepoint,” Lizzie said.