“Is it? What a bother. Would he make a fuss?”

“He’s been dead for several hundred years.”

“Then he doesn’t matter. What do you think of number five?”

I looked up number five—Liza Bonaventura.

I murmured it, testing the sound. Miss Harris eyed me with attention, rapping gently on her teeth with the pen handle.

“Is it too long?”

I wasn’t sure.

“Of course when I got to be famous it would be just Bonaventura. And that’s a good word—might bring me luck.”

“Why don’t you use your own name?”

She laughed, throwing back her head so that I could see the inside of her mouth, pink and fresh like a healthy kitten’s.