Everyone who was at the Scriptorium that day came out to farewell me. We stood in the garden, shivering in the early morning: Da, Mrs. Ballard, Dr. Murray and some of the assistants. But not Mr. Crane. The youngest Murray children were there, Elsie and Rosfrith on either side of their mother. They each held the hand of one of the two smallest and kept their eyes on their shoes.

Lizzie stood in the doorway of the kitchen, even though Da called her to come out. She never liked being among the Dictionary men. “I don’t know how to speak to ’em,” she said, when I teased her about it.

We stood just long enough for Dr. Murray to say something about how much I would learn and the health benefits of walking the hills around Cauldshiels Loch. He gave me a sketchbook and a set of drawing pencils and told me he looked forward to receiving letters with my impressions of the countryside around my new school. I put them in the new satchel Da had given me that morning.

Mrs. Ballard gave me a box filled with biscuits still warm from the oven. “For the journey,” she said, and she hugged me so tight I thought I would stop breathing.

No one said anything for a while. I’m sure most of the assistants were wondering what all the fuss was about. I could see them moving from foot to foot in an effort to keep warm. They wanted to return to their words, to the relative warmth of the Scriptorium. Part of me wanted to return with them. Part of me wanted the adventure to start.

I looked over to where Lizzie stood. Even from a distance, I could see her swollen eyes and red nose. She tried to smile, but the deceit was too much and she had to look away. Her shoulders quivered.

It would prepare me, Ditte had said. It would turn me into a scholar. “And when you leave Cauldshiels,” Da had added, “you can enter Somerville. It’s as close to home as any of the ladies’ halls, and just across the road from the Press.”

Da gave me a gentle nudge. I was meant to respond to Dr. Murray, to say thank you for the sketchbook and pencils, but all I knew was the warmth of the biscuits coming through the box into my hands. I thought about the journey. It would take all the daylight hours and half the night. There would be no heat left in the biscuits by the time I arrived.

PART 2 | 1897–1901

August 1897

The garden at Sunnyside looked smaller than it had two seasons earlier. The trees were in full leaf, and the sky was a patch of blue between the house and the hedges. I could hear the clatter of carts and the clop of horses drawing trams along the Banbury Road.