"Yes, it is Zabelle."
"Isabelle who? Don't you know her other name?"
"No, of course not."
"What you know will not wear your brains out," said Madeleine, smiling and beginning to beat her linen.
"What do you say?" asked little François. Madeleine looked at him again; he was a fine child, and had magnificent eyes. "It is a pity," she thought, "that he seems to be so idiotic. How old are you?" she continued. "Perhaps you do not know that either."
The truth is that he knew no more about this than about the rest. He tried his best to answer, ashamed to have the miller's wife think him so foolish, and delivered himself of this brilliant reply:
"Two years old."
"Indeed?" said Madeleine, wringing out her linen, without looking at him any more, "you are areal little simpleton, and nobody has taken the trouble to teach you, my poor child. You are tall enough to be six years old, but you have not the sense of a child of two."
"Perhaps," answered François. Then, making another effort, as if to shake off the lethargy from his poor little mind, he said:
"Were you asking for my name? It is François the Waif."