[color=darkgray]
Miss Wrottesley’s morning schedule had developed over the years into a rigid affair, albeit one not unwelcome to those teachers who would have otherwise seen her attending their morning classes. She attended morning prayer all days except Sunday, where she instead made a point of attending a Latin mass further afield. After this, she took breakfast—largely avoiding conversation to the best of her ability. Then, between breakfast and lunch, she confined herself to the library. She had a preferred seat, one far from any entrance and near a window. There, she had cultivated a population of surprisingly well-groomed mice. Since the time of her arrival, she had kept stringent control of the lot of them, as evidenced by their perennially constrained population, aforementioned exceptional grooming, and conspicuous competence in defying most attempts to root them out for good. 

What made her control of them most self-evident, however, was that she made use of them during her time in the library. Not one to trouble herself with the business of turning a page, she instead saw to it that the creatures in her command did so in her stead. Every morning, she set several books—most often around three, generally all similar or related in topic—in front of her on the floor. Several mice worked to turn pages as needed, while as many mice as there were books clung to the sides of the chair overseeing the matter. Lydia herself sat with paper and a pen. Scarcely did she look up from her notes, which she wrote in an odd assembly of symbols she attributed to a book written by one M. Jacques Cossard. 

Though her mornings did lack explicit oversight from any given instructor, there was little incentive to interfere. Her choices in reading were most often of some academic pertinence, as they indeed were today. As of the prior day, she had begun working through some responses to Locke’s [i]An Essay Concerning Human Understanding[/i], focusing on Leibniz’s [i]Nouveaux essais sur l'entendement humain[/i], read in the original French, and Berkeley’s [i]A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge[/i], read in English, with Locke’s original work and John Wynne’s [i]An Abridgment of Mr. Locke's Essay concerning the Human Understanding[/i] kept for reference. Each had their mice to flip pages. Each had their mice to oversee. Lydia’s brow sat frozen in a furrowed state, as her lips pulled tight. Occasionally, she inhaled deeply, as if she had briefly neglected a breath. She was motionless, save for her right hand’s rapid movement as it filled the page with notes line by line. Her mornings may not have been spent in the classroom, but she was by no means idle.[/color]