“Will you be my papa?”
A deep silence ensued. La Blanchotte, dumb and tortured with shame, leaned herself against the wall, both her hands upon her heart. The child, seeing that no answer was made him, replied:
“If you will not, I shall go back and drown myself.”
The workman took the matter as a jest and answered, laughing:
“Why, yes, certainly I will.”
“What is your name,” 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 head; then he stretched out his arms, quite consoled, as he said:
“Well, then, Philip, you are my papa.”
The workman, lifting him from the ground, kissed him hastily on both cheeks, and then walked away very quickly with great strides. 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.”