Nearly two centuries after the invention of Braille by a blind adolescent boy, the most widely used Braille-writing tools, the slate and stylus, are quite similar to the tools used by Louis Braille himself.
The bike has disappeared too, though it soon turns up again, both as a symbol of the boy's blind faith he can't believe that his father would have sold it and the vehicle of Cyril's journey from angry isolation through moral peril to understanding and newfound love.