“See, madam, I have brought 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 herself against the wall, both 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?”

“Phillip,” 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, Phillip, you are my Papa.”

The workman, lifting him from the ground kissed him hastily on both cheeks, and then made off 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 Phillip, my Papa.”

Yells of delight burst out from all sides.

“Phillip who? ...  Phillip what?  What on earth is Phillip?  Where did you pick up your Phillip?”

Simon answered nothing; and immovable in faith he defied them with his eye, ready to be martyred rather than fly before them.  The school-master came to his rescue and he returned home to his mother.

During three months, the tall workman, Phillip, frequently passed by the Blanchotte’s house, and sometimes he made bold to speak to her when he saw her sewing near the window.  She answered him civilly, always sedately, never joking with him, nor permitting him to enter her house.  Notwithstanding which, being, like all men, a bit of a coxcomb, he imagined that she was often rosier than usual when she chatted with him.

But a fallen reputation is so difficult to recover and always remains so fragile that, in spite of the shy reserve, La Blanchotte maintained they already gossiped in the neighborhood.

As for Simon, he loved his new Papa much, and walked with him nearly every evening when the day’s work was done.  He went regularly to school and mixed with great dignity with his school-fellows without ever answering them back.