He only asked me to stay if an immediate reply had been sought from Dr. Murray, and on those occasions I was not invited to sit. I thought this an oversight rather than a preference on Mr. Hart’s part, because he always seemed harried. He would rather be in the composing room too, I thought.

In the mornings I belonged to Mrs. Ballard, but I showed little aptitude. “There’s more to it than licking the bowl clean,” she said every time another cake sank or was found, on tasting, to be missing some key ingredient. It was a relief to both of us that my time in the kitchen was being curtailed by errands for the Dictionary. Since becoming Dr. Murray’s occasional delivery girl, I felt more comfortable in the Scriptorium. My misdemeanours may not have been forgotten, but at least my usefulness was being noticed.

“By the time you return with that book I will have two entries written that would not have been written otherwise,” Mr. Sweatman said once. “Keep this up and we’ll be done before the century is out.”

My chores for Mrs. Ballard completed, I took off my apron and hung it on the hook of the pantry door.

“You’re happier,” Lizzie said, pausing over the vegetables she was preparing.

“Time,” I said.

“It’s the Scrippy,” she said, with a cautious look that confused me. “The longer you spend over there the more you seem like your old self.”

“That’s a good thing, isn’t it?”

“For sure, it’s a good thing.” She pushed a pile of chopped carrots into a bowl then began slicing parsnips in half. “I just don’t want you to be tempted,” she said.

“Tempted?”

“By the words.”

I realised then that there had been no words. There had been errands of all kinds, books and notes and verbal messages, but no words. No proofs. I hadn’t been trusted with a single slip.

I had an errands basket by the door of the Scriptorium. Every day there were books to return to various places, and a list for borrowing. There were quotations to check at the Bodleian, letters to post, and notes to deliver to Mr. Hart and sometimes to scholars at the colleges.

On one particular day, there were three letters set aside for Mr. Bradley. They often turned up at the Scriptorium, and it was my job to deliver them to him in his Dictionary Room at the Press. This room was nothing like the Scriptorium: it was just an ordinary office, not much bigger than Mr. Hart’s, even though Mr. Bradley had three assistants working with him. One of them was his daughter, Eleanor. She was about twenty-three, the same age as Hilda Murray, but she already looked matronly. Whenever I visited, she offered me tea and a biscuit.