Page:The fortunes of Fifi (IA fortunesoffifi00seawiala).pdf/129

 I will give you the water.' Of course, he had to give me the picture book, and then I gave him the water. He did not tell my parents on me, wherein he failed in his duty; but he gave me, after mass, a couple of sound slaps—and I played no more tricks on him."

"Holy Father, you must have been a flesh-and-blood boy," said Fifi, softly.

The Holy Father laughed—a fresh, youthful laugh, like his voice.

"Formerly I judged myself harshly. Now I know that, though I was not a very good boy, I was not a bad boy. I was not so good a boy as Barnabas. He had no vocation for the priesthood; but in my eighteenth year the wish to be a priest awoke in me. And the hardest of all the separations which my vocation entailed was the parting with Barnabas. He went to Piacenza and became an advocate. He married and died within a year, leaving a young widow and one child—your father. They were well provided for, and the mother's family took charge of the widow and of the child. But the widow, too, soon died, and only your father was left. I often wished to see him, and my heart yearned like a father's over him, but I was a poor