id to himself, at the bottom of his
heart, that a lass who had erred once might very well err again.

They arrived in front of a very neat little white house.

"There it is," exclaimed the child, and he cried: "Mamma."

A woman appeared, and the workman instantly left off smiling, for he at
once perceived that there was no more fooling to be done with the tall
pale girl, who stood austerely at her door as though to defend from one
man the threshold of that house where she had already been betrayed by
another. Intimidated, his cap in his hand, he stammered out:

"See, Madame, I have brought you back your little boy, who had lost
himself near the river."

But Simon flung his arms about his mother's neck and told her, as he
again began to cry:

"No, mamma, I wished to drown myself, because the others had beaten
me--had beaten me--because I have no papa."

A burning redness covered the young woman's cheeks, and, hurt to the
quick, she embraced her child passionately, while the tears coursed
down her face. The man, much moved, stood there, not knowing how to get
away. But Simon suddenly ran to him and said:

"Will you be my papa?"

A deep silence ensued. La Blanchotte, dumb and tortured with shame,
leaned against the wall, her hands upon her heart. The child, seeing
that no answer was made him, replied:

"If you do not wish it, I shall return to drown myself."

The workman took the matter as a jest and answered laughing:

"Why, yes, I wish it certainly."

"What is your name, then," went on the child, "so that I may tell the
others when they wish to know your name?"

"Philip," answered the man.

Simon was silent a moment so that he might get the name well into his
memory; then he stretched out his arms, quite consoled, and said:

"Well, then, Philip, you are my papa."

The workman, lifting him from the ground, kissed him hastily on both
cheeks, and then strode away quickly.

When the child returned to school next day he was received with a
spiteful laugh, and at the end of school, when the lads were on the
point of recommencing, Simon threw these words at their heads as he
would have done a stone: "He is named Philip, my papa."

Yells of delight burst out from all sides.

"Philip who? Philip what? What on earth is Philip? Where did you pick
up your Philip?"

Simon answered nothing; and immovable in faith he defied them with his
eye, ready to be martyred rather than fly before them. The schoolmaster