A specially trained teacher, sent down by Mrs. Delane, arrived a few days later, and a process began of absorbing and fascinating interest to all the spectators, except Georgina, who more than kept her head.

Every morning Buntingford would motor up to town, spend some strenuous hours in demobilization work at the Admiralty, returning in the evening to receive Cynthia’s report of the day.  Miss Denison, the boy’s teacher, who had been trained in one of the London Special Schools, was a little round-faced lady with spectacles, apparently without any emotions, but really filled with that educator’s passion which in so many women of our day fills the place of motherhood.  From the beginning she formed the conclusion that the pitiable little fellow entrusted to her was to a great extent educable; but that he would not live to maturity.  This latter conclusion was carefully hidden from Buntingford, though it was known to Cynthia; and Philip knew, for a time, all the happiness, the excitement even of each day’s slight advance, combined with a boundless hope for the future.  He spent his evenings absorbed in the voluminous literature dealing with the deaf-mute, which has grown up since the days of Laura Bridgman and Helen Keller.  But Laura Bridgman and Helen Keller—­as he eagerly reminded himself—­were both of them blind; only one sense—­that of touch—­was left to them.  Arthur’s blue eyes, the copy of his own, already missed his father when he left home in the morning, and greeted him when he came home at night.  They contained for Philip a mystery and a promise that he was never tired of studying.  Every evening he would ride over from Dansworth station to the cottage, put up his horse, and spend the long summer twilights in carrying his son about the garden or the park, or watching Miss Denison at her work.  The boy was physically very frail, and soon tired.  But his look was now placid; the furrows in the white brow were smoothed away; his general nutrition was much better; his delicate cheeks had filled out a little; and his ghostly beauty fascinated Philip’s artistic sense, while his helplessness appealed to the tenderest instinct of a strong man.  Buntingford had discovered a new and potent reason for living; and for living happily.

And meanwhile with all this slowly growing joy, Cynthia was more and more closely connected.  She and Buntingford had a common topic, which was endlessly interesting and delightful to them both.  Philip was no longer conscious of her conventionalities and limitations, as he had been conscious of them on his first renewed acquaintance with her after the preoccupations of the war.  He saw her now as Arthur’s fairy godmother, and as his own daily companion and helper in an exquisite task.