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work the preparations for taking a lunar? I hope so. If not I shall explain it in a different way, though by the time my “lecture” as you will doubtless call it reaches you I am certain you’ll already have worked it out.
    Everything is the same, here. Phoebe Fuller came into the Atheneum a few days ago to interrogate me about poor widow Ramsay’s reading habits; there have been a half-dozen more disownments. Lizzie was read out for singing songs while doing the washing, or some such. I half-expect Phoebe to disown herself by accident one of these days, if she should catch herself chatting with an off-Islander. I thought to tell her to let the poor widow be, but said nothing.
    Father has been away much of the time on Bank business. I know you think he shall never forgive your decision but I’m certain if you wrote to him directly he’d be glad to hear from you. I wish you would—maybe it would encourage him to take more of an interest in our astronomical labors again. I imagine he is in hopes that when you return things will be as they once were, and we three can undertake the Coast Survey contract, should the Bonds manage to arrange it. George is pestering me to visit but I can’t see how we can take the time away.
    I remembered recently that I once thought of leaving, too, when we were children and pretended at navigating our way across the dark Atlantic. I passed our playground the other day on one of my rambles— where that old log used to sit on the beach at Madaket. It all came back to me—I was the captain, and you were the cook and boatsteerer and 1st mate all at once—but now you are actually crossing the ocean and I am ashore, as always.
Please study and read when you can and also write to your loving Sister, HGP
. 4 . Decimal arithmetic
T
    he next afternoon, Hannah heard the distant knock on the door downstairs and, annoyed by the intrusion, forced herself to put aside the equations she’d been wrestling with for weeks. George had sent dozens of articles and commentaries about the work of British mathematician John C. Adams, who was calculating the probable location of a never-seen planet that would account for the inexplicable aberration in the orbit of Uranus. Hannah had plugged in Adams’ data and worked through the equations herself from top to bottom, but hadn’t been able to replicate his conclusions. It was infuriating: Adams was but a year older than Hannah, and what had she discovered? If she couldn’t even work down his equations with his own data, how could she expect to compute the orbit of a comet she had yet to even sight?
    Her heavy lace-up boots echoed as she clumped downstairs and threw open the door as if it were responsible for all her failings. The Pearl ’s second mate was waiting on the porch, his hands clasped behind his back. He wore the same jumper as the day before, but had a threadbare green scarf wrapped around his neck in addition, as if that could possibly protect him from the cold.
    He lowered his head to acknowledge her, but made no move to enter. She hesitated, too. Normally, she’d have already entered all the required information about the timepiece and its vessel in the log, and could just return it and collect the payment. In this case, though, she’d put it off. And the Pearl ’s chronometer was still up in the garret. A blast of cold wind gusted, and they wrapped their arms around their bodies at the same time.
    “There’s some information I need from you,” she said, shivering. “Step inside.”
He made his strange bow again, then slipped past her into the hallway, pausing before removing his soft cap and placing it on the peg beside her bonnet. Hannah led him through the hallway, and she was halfway up the stairs when she realized he wasn’t behind her.
The man had stopped at the entry to the sitting room and was staring at the half-filled globe of water hanging from the ceiling in the center of the room, a relic of her father’s old experiments.