Page:Malot - Nobodys Boy, Crewe-Jones, 1916.djvu/353

 "That's impossible."

"Because it's your duty to keep with your family, eh? But is it your family?"

These discussions only had one result, they made me more unhappy than I had ever been. How terrible it is to doubt. Yet, in spite of my wish not to doubt, I doubted. Who would have thought when I was crying so sadly because I thought I had no family that I should be in such despair now that I had one. How could I know the truth? In the meantime I had to sing and dance and laugh and make grimaces when my heart was full.

One Sunday my father told me to stay in the house because he wanted me. He sent Mattia off alone. All the others had gone out; my grandfather alone was upstairs. I had been with my father for about an hour when there was a knock at the door. A gentleman, who was unlike any of the men who usually called on my father, came in. He was about fifty years old and dressed in the height of fashion. He had white pointed teeth like a dog and when he smiled he drew his lips back over them as though he was going to bite. He spoke to my father in English, turning continually to look at me. Then he began to talk French; he spoke this language with scarcely an accent.

"This is the young boy that you spoke to me about?" he said. "He appears very well."

"Answer the gentleman," said my father to me.

"Yes, I am quite well," I replied, surprised.

"You have never been ill?"