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