Free The Children’s Home by Charles Lambert

room.
    As Crane darted among the trunks, he discovered that David wanted to learn to read. The first few days the boy seemed content to sit in the room, on a small chair he had found somewhere else in the house and carried there himself, quietly watching the Doctor arrange the books in one bookcase and then another. Later, as Crane settled into an armchair, with the boy beside him, he became aware that David was leaning forward and moving his lips, not uttering a sound, as though he were reading the words on the page of Crane’s book to himself. The book was written in French, a language the Doctor understood, but with difficulty, and he realized that he was silently mouthing the words as he read, as though listening to himself. David must have thought that reading was that, a sort of silent listening. He closed the book.
    “Would you like to learn to read?” he said.
    “Is that what you’re doing?” David said. “Are you reading now?”
    The Doctor nodded.
    “Then, yes, I would,” said David, with a shy smile, as though he had just been offered a slice of cake or a special treat of some kind. He took the Doctor’s hand and squeezed it tightly, so that Crane was unexpectedly moved. “Can you show me how to do it? So that I can help you.”
    “Help me?”
    “Yes.”
    “Help me to do what?”
    “To find what you’re looking for.”
    “And what’s that, do you think?” the Doctor asked, amused, but also curious. “What am I looking for, do you think?” But David didn’t answer. The Doctor reached for a book in English and opened it to the first page. There was a picture of a plant on the left and, on the right, a description of the plant. The book was old but not too old, he thought. He pointed to the name of the plant, arnica , and pronounced the word, and then the first letter, a . “Yes, yes,” said David, nodding in an anxious, impatient way, “I see. I mean, I understand.”
    “Repeat it then,” the Doctor said.
    David learned quickly. Sometimes the Doctor felt that the boy was not so much learning to read as remembering a skill he had momentarily lost. His eyes would move down the page with a hungry expression, as though in search of something, even as his lips pronounced the words above. He began to choose the books he wanted to learn from, in a way that made no immediate sense to the Doctor. Not all were books he would have chosen to teach a child his letters, but that didn’t matter to David. If the Doctor hesitated, David sat there and waited, unbudgeable. Soon, within days, it seemed, David was reading alone, taking the books he had chosen to a small chair on the other side of the room. That was when he asked the Doctor if he could teach the others to read, all of them, even the youngest. Even the babies, he seemed to mean.
    “Why don’t you show Morgan what you’ve learned first?” Crane said after a moment, wanting to see what David would say. “I’m sure he’ll be so pleased.”
    David looked doubtful.
    “But I want it to be a surprise,” he said, his lower lip jutting out in a gesture so petulant, so childish, that Crane noticed, as he had done before, how rarely David behaved like a child.
    “It will be a surprise,” Crane said. “I haven’t breathed a word to him of this. He thinks I’m studying on my own account.”
    “No,” said David, shaking his head. “Not the reading. I didn’t mean the reading.” And then he looked anxious, as though he had said too much, and regretted it. He thought for a moment, then came to a decision.
    “All right,” the boy said.
    “What did you mean, David, by a surprise?” Crane said, his curiosity too strong to be suppressed. “What did you want to be a surprise?”
    David closed his book and grinned. The Doctor was startled. David was generally such a solemn boy.
    “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “It will be in any case.” Placing the book he was holding back on the shelf, he ran from the room. The Doctor heard him calling