It didn’t mention bleeding, but I understood. I let the pages fan past my thumb. There were thirteen hundred in just this one volume, about the same as in A and B, and I remembered Da saying there would never be an end to words beginning with C. I looked around the Scriptorium and tried to guess how many words were stored in the pigeon-holes and the books and in the heads of Dr. Murray and his assistants. Not one of them could fully explain what had happened to me. Not one.

“Should she be in here?” Mr. Crane’s voice cut through my thoughts.

I closed the volume in a hurry and turned round. I looked to Da, who was looking at Mr. Crane.

“I thought you’d gone for the night,” Da said, sounding friendlier than he was.

“This really is no place for children.”

I wasn’t a child anymore; everyone had told me that.

“She’s no trouble,” said Mr. Sweatman.

“She’s interfering with materials.”

I felt my heart pound and couldn’t stop myself from speaking. “Dr. Murray said I should avail myself of the Dictionary volumes whenever I liked.” I immediately regretted it when Da flashed me a cautionary look. But Mr. Crane neither responded nor looked in my direction.

“Will you be joining us, Crane?” asked Mr. Sweatman. “With three of us we should get through this work before dinnertime.”

“I’ve just come back to get my coat,” he said. Then he nodded to them both and left the Scriptorium.

I returned the great volume of C words to its shelf and told Da I would wait for him in the kitchen.

“You are welcome to stay,” he said.

But I was no longer sure. Over the next few months I spent more time in the kitchen than the Scriptorium.

Da read Ditte’s letter and shared none of it. When he finished, he folded it back into its envelope and put it in his trouser pocket instead of leaving it on the side table, where other letters from Ditte would sometimes sit for days.

“Will she visit us soon?” I asked.

“She doesn’t say,” said Da, as he picked up the newspaper.

“Did she say anything about me?”

He let the paper drop so he could see me. “She asked how you were enjoying school,” he said.

I shrugged. “It’s boring. But I’m allowed to help the younger ones when I’ve finished my work. I like that.”

He took a deep breath, and I thought he was going to tell me something. He didn’t. He just looked at me a little longer, then said it was time for bed.

A few days later, after Da had kissed me goodnight and returned downstairs to work on proofs, I tip-toed across the hall and into his room. I crawled into the wardrobe and retrieved the shabbier of the two boxes. I took out Ditte’s letter.