Now, an hour later, she had learned a substantial amount about Josephine March. She had learned that she had grown up, with her parents and three sisters, in a little town just outside Boston in the latter part of the nineteenth century, in a household where money had been in short supply, but the family had taken pride in making do with what they had and had considered themselves fortunate. She had learned that Jo had loved to read, and to weave dreams, and to write stories—it seemed that the family story that she had had books published had been correct, and, indeed, she had apparently at one time achieved some recognition for them—that she had also loved to sleigh, and to skate, and had openly envied the freedom from convention that seemed taken for granted by the boys of the day. She had learned that Jo had admired Napoleon and George Washington, had hated pretension, had a habit of saying “Christopher Columbus,” which for some reason was considered shocking, and had sometimes made mistakes, for which she had always apologized afterwards; she had learned that the Marches had regarded their small family unit as the single most precious possession they owned. She had learned that Jo, like Lulu, had sometimes felt out of place in the world, had been odd and awkward and tactless, but that her family had loved her nevertheless.

Riffling through the pile, she picked up a letter at random and reread, smiling, an account of an experiment that the youngest sister, Amy, had made with a piece of pokerwork and—according to Jo’s enthusiastic recounting of the tale in a letter to Meg—had all but burned the house down. Amy had been artistic, it seemed, and Meg sounded efficient and organized: a little, thought Lulu, like Sophie and Emma. Sophie and Emma would enjoy the letters; but Lulu had decided that she would not reveal her discovery to either of them, not just yet. One day, of course, she would have to; but then everyone would know about them, not just her, and Lulu found she rather wanted to have Jo March all to herself for at least a little while.

The sudden harsh ring of her mobile phone pulled her back to the present day. She dragged it from the pocket of her jeans, inspected the name that flashed on the front, and sighed: it was her employer.

“Hello, Mr. Goncharoff.” Nikolai Goncharoff was Russian-born, firmly of the old world and formally inclined. He liked Lulu a great deal and she him, but he had never once suggested to her that she address him by his first name.

“Miss Atwater, I do not wish to disturb you, but I am wondering whether by any chance you intend to return to work this afternoon.”

“Oh, Mr. Goncharoff, I’m sorry.” Lulu glanced at her watch and started—she had had no idea of how much time had passed since she had left the shop. “Oh, no! Oh, Mr. Goncharoff, I really am sorry, I hadn’t noticed the time. Shall we just forget about this afternoon and call it my afternoon off?”