Mrs. Delane set patiently to work, trying this, and testing that; and at the end of the first week, she and Cynthia were sitting on the floor beside the boy, who had a heap of bricks before him.  For more than an hour Mrs. Delane had been guiding his thin fingers in making a tower of bricks one upon another, and then knocking them down.  Then, at one moment, it began to seem to her that each time his hand enclosed in hers knocked the bricks down, there was a certain faint flash in the blue eyes, as though the sudden movement of the bricks gave the child a thrill of pleasure.  But to fall they must be built up.  And his absorbed teacher laboured vainly, through sitting after sitting, to communicate to the child some sense of the connection between the two sets of movements.

Time after time the small waxen hand lay inert in hers as she put a brick between its listless fingers, and guided it towards the brick waiting for it.  Gradually the column of bricks mounted—­built by her action, her fingers enclosing his passive ones—­and, finally, came the expected crash, followed by the strange slight thrill in the child’s features.  But for long there was no sign of spontaneous action of any kind on his part.  The ingenuity of his teacher attempted all the modes of approach to the obstructed brain that were known to her, through the two senses left him—­sight and touch.  But for many days in vain.

At last, one evening towards the end of June, when his mother had been dead little more than a fortnight, Cynthia, Mrs. Delane’s indefatigable pupil, was all at once conscious of a certain spring in the child’s hand, as though it became—­faintly—­self-moved, a living thing.  She cried out.  Buntingford was there looking on; and all three hung over the child.  Cynthia again placed the brick in his hand, and withdrew her own.  Slowly the child moved it forward—­dropped it—­then, with help, raised it again—­and, finally, with only the very slight guidance from Cynthia, put it on top of the other.  Another followed, and another, his hand growing steadier with each attempt.  Then breathing deeply,—­flushed, and with a puckered forehead—­the boy looked up at his father.  Tears of indescribable joy had rushed to Buntingford’s eyes.  Cynthia’s were hidden in her handkerchief.

The child’s nurse peremptorily intervened and carried him off to bed.  Mrs. Delane first arranged with Buntingford for the engagement of a special teacher, taught originally by herself, and then asked for something to take her to the station.  She had set things in train, and had no time to lose.  There were too many who wanted her.