He would not let himself lose hope.  All the others lost it.  “The only thing you can do is to humour her,” even David was reduced in time to saying; but Tommy replied cheerily, “Not a bit of it.”  Every morning he had to begin at the same place as on the previous morning, and he was always as ready to do it, and as patient, as if this were the first time.

“I think she is a little more herself to-day,” he would say determinedly, till David wondered to hear him.

“She makes no progress, Sandys.”

“I can at least keep her from slipping back.”

And he did, and there is no doubt that this was what saved Grizel in the end.  How he strove to prevent her slipping back!  The morning was the time when she was least troubled, and had he humoured her then they would often have been easy hours for him.  But it was the time when he tried most doggedly, with a gentleness she could not ruffle, to teach her the alphabet of who she was.  She coaxed him to let her off those mental struggles; she turned petulant and sulky; she was willing to be good and sweet if he would permit her to sew or to sing to herself instead, or to sit staring at the fire:  but he would not yield; he promised those things as the reward, and in the end she stood before him like a child at lessons.

“What is your name?” The catechism always began thus.

“Grizel,” she said obediently, if it was a day when she wanted to please him.

“And my name?”

“Tommy.”  Once, to his great delight, she said, “Sentimental Tommy.”  He quite bragged about this to David.

“Where is your home?”

“Here.”  She was never in doubt about this, and it was always a pleasure to her to say it.

“Did you live here long ago?”

She nodded.

“And then did you live for a long time somewhere else?”

“Yes.”

“Where was it?”

“Here.”

“No, it was with the old doctor.  You were his little housekeeper; don’t you remember?  Try to remember, Grizel; he loved you so much.”

She tried to think.  Her face was very painful when she tried to think.  “It hurts,” she said.

“Do you remember him, Grizel?”

“Please let me sing,” she begged, “such a sweet song!”

“Do you remember the old doctor who called you his little housekeeper?  He used to sit in that chair.”

The old chair was among Grizel’s many possessions that had been brought to Double Dykes, and her face lit up with recollection.  She ran to the chair and kissed it.

“What was his name, Grizel?”

“I should love to know his name,” she said wistfully.

He told her the name many times, and she repeated it docilely.

Or perhaps she remembered her dear doctor quite well to-day, and thought Tommy was some one in need of his services.

“He has gone into the country,” she said, as she had so often said to anxious people at the door; “but he won’t be long, and I shall give him your message the moment he comes in.”