Dr. Murray sat at one end of the large table, Mrs. Murray at the other. There was room for all eleven of their children in between, but three had flown the coop, Lizzie said. The rest were spread along each side of the table, the biggest at Dr. Murray’s end, the littlest in high chairs near their mother. I stood dumb as they finished saying grace, then Elsie and Rosfrith waved and I waved back, my message suddenly less important.

“Our new assistant?” Dr. Murray said over his spectacles when he saw me lurking.

I nodded, and he rose. The rest of the Murrays began to eat.

In the Scriptorium, Da was explaining something to Mr. Crane, who turned when he heard us come in.

“Dr. Murray, sir. An honour to join your team,” he said, holding out his hand and bowing slightly.

Dr. Murray cleared his throat. It sounded a bit like a grunt. He shook Mr. Crane’s hand. “It’s not for everyone,” he said. “Takes a certain…diligence. Are you diligent, Mr. Crane?”

“Of course, sir,” he said.

Dr. Murray nodded then returned to the house to finish lunch.

Da continued with his tour. Whenever he told Mr. Crane something about the way the slips were sorted, Mr. Crane would nod and say, “Quite straightforward.”

“The slips are sent in by volunteers from all over the world,” I said, when Da was showing him how the pigeon-holes were ordered.

Mr. Crane looked down at me, frowned a little but made no response. I stepped back a fraction.

Mr. Sweatman put a hand on my shoulder. “I came across a slip from Australia once,” he said. “That’s about as far away from England as you can get.”

When Dr. Murray returned from lunch to give Mr. Crane his instructions, I didn’t sit and listen.

“Will he be here for a little while or forever?” I whispered to Da.

“For the duration,” he said. “So, probably forever.”

I crawled beneath the sorting table, and a few minutes later an unfamiliar pair of shoes joined those I knew so well.

Mr. Crane’s shoes were old, like Da’s, but they hadn’t been polished in a while. I watched as they tried to settle. He crossed his right leg over his left, then his left over his right. Eventually, he wrapped his ankles around the front legs of his chair, and it looked as though his shoes were trying to hide from me.

Just before Lizzie was to take me back to school, a whole pile of slips fell beside Mr. Crane’s chair. I heard Da say that some of the C bundles had become “unwieldy with the weight of possibility.” He made that little noise he made when he thought he was being funny.