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PICCINO
AND OTHER CHILD STORIES
[Illustration: “SO HE WENT TO SHOW IT HIS TROUSERS”]
PICCINO
AND OTHER CHILD STORIES
BY
FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
1897
COPYRIGHT, 1894, 1897, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS
TROW DIRECTORY
PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY
NEW YORK
CONTENTS
PAGE
_Two Days in the Life of Piccino_, _1_
_The Captain’s Youngest_, _87_
_Little Betty’s Kitten Tells Her Story_, _129_
_How Fauntleroy Occurred_, _157_
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
“_So he went to show it his trousers_,” _Frontispiece_
“_Piccino, who lay fast asleep_,” _13_
“_Piccino clung to the donkey, rubbing his cheek wofully
against her gray shoulder_,” _19_
“_‘I am going to wash you myself,’ said Lady Aileen,
lifting him in her strong white arms_,” _51_
“_The girl stared at him_,” _69_
“_I polished away at the Captain’s sabre_,” _91_
“_Miss Rose put her hands on his shoulders_,” _103_
“_And I shall always be fond of you, Rabbett_,” _125_
“_I did not like the swing at first_,” _143_
“_I left her lap and curled up in her arm_,” _151_
_Fauntleroy’s welcome into the world: “F’ow him in
’er fire!”_ _165_
_His initial act of charity: “Lady,” he said, “lady,
f’ont door—want b’ead,”_ _179_
“_I’m very sorry for you, Mr. Wenham, about your
wife being dead_,” _191_
“_Are you in society, Mrs. Wilkins?_” _197_
_The real Fauntleroy listening to the story of the ideal
Fauntleroy_, _215_
TWO DAYS IN THE LIFE
OF PICCINO
TWO DAYS IN THE LIFE OF PICCINO
CHAPTER I
If he lived a hundred years—to be as old as Giuseppe, who was little
Roberto’s great-grand-father, and could only move when he was helped,
and sat in the sun and played with bits of string—if he lived to be as
old as that, he could never forget them, those two strange and dreadful
days.
When sometimes he spoke of them to such of his playmates as were older
than himself—especially to Carlo, who tended sheep, and was afraid
of nothing, even making jokes about the _forestieri_—they said they
thought he had been foolish; that as it seemed that the people had been
ready to give him anything, it could not have been so bad but one could
have tried to bear it, though they all agreed that it was dreadful
about the water.
It is true, too, that as he grew older himself, after his mother died
and his father married again—the big Paula who flew into such rages and
beat him—and when he had to tend sheep and goats himself, and stay
out on the hills all day in such ragged jackets and with so little
food—because Paula said he had not earned his salt, and she had her own
children to feed—then he longed for some of the food he would not eat
during those two days, and wondered if he would do quite the same thing
again under the same circumstances. But this was only when he was very
hungry and the mistral was blowing, and the Mediterranean looked gray
instead of blue.
He was such a tiny fellow when it happened. He was not yet six years
old, and when a child is under six he has not reached the age when
human creatures have begun to face life for themselves altogether;
and even a little Italian peasant, who tumbles about among sheep and
donkeys, which form part of his domestic circle, is still in a measure
a sort of baby, whose mother or brother or sister has to keep an
occasional eye on him to see that he does not kill himself. And then
also Piccino had been regarded by his family as a sort of capital, and
had consequently had more attention paid to him than he would have had
under ordinary circumstances.
It was like this. He was so pretty, so wonderfully pretty! His
brothers and sisters were not beauties, but he was a beauty from his
first day, and with every day that passed he grew prettier. When
he was so tiny that he was packed about like a bundle, wound up in
unattractive-looking bandages, he had already begun to show what his
eyes were going to be—his immense soft black eyes, with lashes which
promised to be velvet fringes. And as soon as his hair began to show
itself, it was lovely silk, which lay in rings, one over the other, on
his beautiful little round head. Then his soft cheeks and chin were of
exquisite roundness, and in each he had a deep dimple which came and
went as he laughed.
He was always being looked at and praised. A “_Gesù bambino_” the
peasant women called him. That was what they always said when a child
had wonderful beauty, their idea of supreme child loveliness being
founded on the pictures and waxen, richly dressed figures they saw in
the churches.
But it was the _forestieri_ who admired him most, and that was why
he was so valuable. His family lived near a strange little old city
in the hills, which spread out behind one of the fashionable seaside
towns on the Italian Riviera. The strange little old city, which
was a relic of centuries gone by, was one of the places the rich
foreigners made excursions to see. It was a two or three hours’ drive
from the fashionable resort, and these gay, rich people, who seemed
to do nothing but enjoy themselves, used to form parties and drive in
carriages up the road which wound its way up from the shore through
the olive vineyards and back into the hills. It was their habit to
bring servants with them, and hampers of wonderful things to eat, which
would be unpacked by the servants and spread on white cloths on the
grass in some spot shaded by the trees. Then they would eat, and drink
wine, and laugh, and afterwards wander about and explore the old city
of Ceriani, and seem to find the queer houses and the inhabitants and
everything about it interesting.
To the children of Ceriani and its outskirts these excursion parties
were delightful festivities. When they heard of the approach of one
they gathered themselves together and went forth to search for its
encampment. When they had found it they calmly seated themselves in
rows quite near and watched it as if it were a kind of theatrical
entertainment to which they had paid for admission. They were all
accomplished in the art of begging, and knew that the _forestieri_
always had plenty of small change, and would give, either through
good-nature or to avoid being annoyed. Then they knew from experience
that the things that were not eaten were never repacked into the
hampers if there was some one to ask for them. So they kept their
places quite cheerfully and looked on at the festivities, and talked
to each other and showed their white teeth in generous grins quite
amiably, sure of reaping a pleasant harvest before the carriages drove
back again down the winding road ending at the sea and San Remo, and
the white, many-balconied hotels.
And it was through these excursion parties that Piccino’s market
value was discovered. When he was a baby and his sister Maria, who
was his small nurse—being determined not to be left behind by her
comrades—toiled after the rest of the children with her little burden
in her arms or over her shoulder, it was observed that the _forestieri_
always saw the pretty round black baby head and big soft dark eyes
before they saw anything else, and their attention once attracted by
Piccino very pleasant things were often the result. The whole party
got more cakes and sandwiches and legs of chickens and backs of little
birds, and when bits of silver were given to Maria for Piccino, Maria
herself sometimes even had whole francs given to her, because it was
she who was his sister and took care of him. And then, having begun
giving, the good-natured ones among the party of ladies and gentlemen
did not like to quite neglect the other children, and so scattered
_soldi_ among them, so that sometimes they all returned to Ceriani
feeling that they had done a good day’s work. Their idea of a good
day’s work was one when they had not run after carriages for nothing,
or had heads shaken at them when they held out their hands and called
imploringly, “_Uno soldino, bella signora—bella signora!_” Piccino had
been born one of the class which in its childhood and often even later
never fails in the belief that the English and Americans who come to
the beautiful Riviera come there to be begged from, or in some way
beguiled out of their small coin.
Maria was a sharp child. She had not lugged her little brothers and
sisters about all through the working time of her twelve years without
learning a few things. She very soon found out what it was that brought
in the _soldi_ and the nice scraps from the hampers.
“It is Piccino they give things to—_ecco_!” she said. “They see his
eyes and they want to look at him and touch his cheeks. They like to
see the dimples come when he laughs. They would not look at me like
that, or at you, Carmela. They would not come near us.”
This was quite true. The row of little spectators watching the picnics
might be picturesque, but it was exceedingly dirty, and not made up of
the material it is quite safe to come near. It was a belief current
among the parties who drove up from San Remo that soap had never been
heard of in the vicinity of Ceriani and that water was avoided as a
poisonous element, and this belief was not founded upon mere nothings.
“They are as dirty as they are cheerful and impudent,” some one had
said, “and that is saying a great deal. I wonder what would happen if
one of them were caught and washed all over.”
Nobody could have been dirtier than Piccino was. Pretty as he looked,
there were days when the most enthusiastic of the ladies dare not have
taken him in her arms. In fact, there were very few days when any one
would have liked to go quite that far—or any farther, indeed, than
looking at his velvet eyes and throwing him _soldi_ and cakes. But his
eyes always won him the _soldi_ and cakes, and the older he grew the
more he gained, so that not only Maria and her companions, but his
mother herself, began to look upon him as a source of revenue.
“If he can only sing when he grows a little older,” his mother said,
“he can fill his pockets full by going and singing before the hotels
and in the gardens of the villas. Every one will give him something.
They are a queer lot, these foreigners, who are willing to give good
money to a child because he has long eyelashes. His are long enough,
thanks to the Virgin! Sometimes I wonder they are not in his way.”
His mother was the poorest of the poor. She had seven children, and a
mere hovel to put them in, and nothing to feed and clothe them with.
Her husband was a good-for-nothing, who never worked if he could help
it, and who, if he earned a few _soldi_, got rid of them at once
before they could be scolded out of him and spent on such extravagances
as food and fire. If Piccino had not been a little Italian peasant he
would, no doubt, have starved to death or died of cold long before he
had his adventure; but on the Riviera the sun shines and the air is
soft, and people seem born with a sort of gay carelessness of most
things that trouble the serious world.
As for Piccino, he was as happy as a soft little rabbit or a young bird
or a baby fawn. When he was old enough to run about, he had the most
beautiful days. They seemed to him to be made up of warm sunshine and
warm grass, flowers looking at him as he toddled round, light filtering
through vines and the branches of olive-trees, nice black bread and
figs, which he lay on his back and munched delightedly, and days when
Maria dragged him along the road to some green place where grand
people sat and ate good things, and who afterwards gave him cakes and
delicious little bones and _soldi_, saying over and over again to each
other that he was the prettiest little boy they had ever seen, and had
the most beautiful eyes, and oh! his eyelashes!
“Look at his eyelashes!” they would exclaim. “They are as thick as
rushes round a pool, and they must be half an inch long.”
Sometimes Piccino got rather tired of his eyelashes, and wore a
resigned expression, but he was little Italian enough to feel that they
must be rather a good thing, as they brought such luck. Once, indeed,
a man came all by himself to Ceriani, and persuaded his mother to make
him sit on a stone while he put him in a picture, and when it was over
he gave his mother several francs, and she was delighted; but Piccino
was not so pleased, because he had thought it rather tiresome to sit so
long on one stone.
This was the year before the dreadful two days came.
When they came he had been put into queer little trousers, which were
much too big for him. One of his brothers had outgrown them and given
them good wear. They were, in fact, as ragged as they were big, and as
dirty as they were ragged; but Piccino was very proud of them. He went
and showed them to the donkey, whose tumble-down sleeping apartment was
next to his own, and who was his favorite playmate and companion. It
was such a little donkey, but such a good one! It could carry a burden
almost as big as its stable, and it had soft, furry ears and soft,
furry sides, and eyes and eyelashes as pretty for a donkey as Piccino’s
were for a boy. It was nearly always at work, but when it was at home
Piccino was nearly always with it. On wet and cold days he stayed with
it in its tiny, broken stable, playing and talking to it; and many
a day he had fallen asleep with his curly head on its warm little
fuzzy side. When it was fine they strolled about together and were
companions, the donkey cropping the grass and Piccino pretending it was
a little flock of sheep, and that he was big enough to be a shepherd.
In the middle of the night he used to like to waken and hear it move
and make little sounds. It was so close to him that he felt as if they
slept together.
So he went to show it his trousers, of course.
“Now I am a man,” he said, and he stood close by its head, and the two
pairs of lustrous eyes looked affectionately into each other.
After that they sauntered out together into the beautiful early
morning. When Piccino was with the donkey his mother and Maria knew he
was quite safe and so was the donkey, so they were allowed to ramble
about. They never went far, it is true. Piccino was too little, and
besides, there were such nice little rambles quite near. This time was
the loveliest of all the year. The sun was sweetly warm, but not hot,
and there were anemones and flaming wild tulips in the grass.
[Illustration: “PICCINO, WHO LAY FAST ASLEEP”]
Piccino did not know how long they were out together before Maria came
to find them. The donkey had a beautiful breakfast, and Piccino ate
his piece of black bread without anything to add to its flavor,
because his mother was at the time in great trouble and very poor,
and there was scarcely the bread itself to eat. Piccino toddled along
quite peacefully, however, and when he came upon a space where there
were red and yellow tulips swaying in the soft air he broke off a fine
handful, and when the donkey lay down he sat by it and began to stick
the beautiful, flaring things round his hat, as he had seen Maria stick
things round hers. It was a torn, soft felt hat, with a pointed crown
and a broad rim, and when he put it on again, with its adornment of red
and yellow flowers sticking up and down, and falling on his soft, thick
curls, he was a strangely beautiful little thing to see, and so like
a picture that he scarcely seemed like a real child at all, but like
a lovely, fantastic little being some artist had arranged to put on
canvas.
He was sitting in this way, looking out to where he could see a bit of
blue sea through a break in the hills, when Maria came running towards
him.
“The donkey!” she cried, “the donkey!”
She had been crying and looked excited, and took him by the hand,
dragging him towards home. His legs were so short and he was so little
that it always seemed as if she dragged him. She was an excitable
child, and always went fast when she had an object in view. Piccino
was used to excitement. They all shouted and screamed and gesticulated
at each other when any trifling thing happened. His mother and her
neighbors were given to tears and cries and loud ejaculations upon the
slightest provocation, as all Italian peasants are, so he saw nothing
unusual in Maria’s coming upon him like a whirlwind and exclaiming
disjointedly with tears. He wondered, however, what the donkey could
have to do with it, and evidently the donkey wondered too, for she got
up and trotted after them down the road.
But when they reached the house it was very plain that the thing which
had occurred was not a trifle, or usual.
Piccino saw an old man standing before the door talking to his mother.
At least, he was trying to get in a word edgeways now and then, while
the mother wept and beat her breast and poured forth a torrent of
bewailing, mingled with an avalanche of scolding addressed to her
husband, who stood near her, looking at once sheepish and ill-tempered.
“Worthless brute and pig,” she proclaimed; “idle, wicked animal, who
will not work to help me to feed his children. It is only I who work
and the donkey who helps me. Without her we should starve—starve! And
he sells her—poor beast!—sells her to get money for his wickedness and
gluttony. And I am to starve without her—a fine thing! And he brings to
my door the thief he has sold her to.”
Baby as he was, Piccino began to understand. His father had sold the
donkey, and it would be taken away. He lifted up his voice in a wail of
bitter lamentation, and breaking away from Maria ran to the donkey and
clung round her front leg, rubbing his cheek wofully against her gray
shoulder.
For an hour or so they all wept and lamented while their mother
alternately wept and raved. She abused her husband and the old man who
had bought the donkey, by turns. Stray neighbors dropped in and helped
her. They all agreed that old Beppo was a usurer and a thief, who had
somehow got the better of Annibale, who was also a drunken, shameless
brute. Old Beppo was so overwhelmed by the storm of hard words and bad
names raging about him that he actually was stunned into allowing that
the donkey should remain where she was for two days, that she might
finish some work her mistress had promised to do with her aid. And he
went away grumbling, with his piece of rope over his arm.
There was nothing to eat in the house, and if there had been, the
mother was too prostrate with grief and rage to have prepared anything
like a meal. And so it seemed a great piece of good luck when dirty
little Filippo burst upon them with the news that three grand carriages
full of illustrious-looking _forestieri_ and inviting hampers were
unloading themselves at a certain turn of the road, where the grass was
thick and the trees big and close together.
“Come!” said Maria, catching at Piccino’s hand. She gave him a look
over. His crying had left a flush in his soft cheeks and a little
pathetic curve on his baby mouth, which was always like a tiny
vermilion bow. His hat, with the tulips tumbling round it, was set
on the back of his head, and the red and yellow things made his eyes
look bigger and lovelier than ever by contrast. In these respects
Maria saw that he was good for more cakes and _soldi_ than ever. And
it would never have occurred to her that tears and rubbing against
the donkey had left him dirtier than ever. In Maria’s world nobody
troubled themselves about dirt. Washing one’s self amounted almost to a
religious ceremony. But ah! that little love of a Piccino was dirty—as
dirty as he was soft and dimpled and rich-colored and beautiful!
Near the place where the pleasure-seekers had spread their feast upon
the grass there was a low, rough, stone wall at the side of the road.
[Illustration: “PICCINO CLUNG TO THE DONKEY, RUBBING HIS CHEEK WOFULLY
AGAINST HER GRAY SHOULDER”]
When the servants had spread the bright rugs and cushions upon the
ground the party sat down in little groups. No sooner had they done
this than one of the ladies looked up and broke into a little laugh.
“Look there!” she said, nodding in the direction of the low wall, which
was only a few yards from them.
And those near her looked and saw a little boy peasant, sitting
with his legs dangling, and gazing at them with the interest and
satisfaction of a person who has had the good fortune to secure the
best seat at a theatre.
“He is a sharp one,” said the lady, “he has got here first. There will
be others directly. They are like a swarm of little vultures. The
Bothwicks, who have the Villa des Palmiers, were here a week ago, and
they said children seemed to start up from the earth.”
The servants moved about in dexterous silence, unpacking the hampers
and spreading white cloths. The gentlemen sat at the ladies’ feet, and
everybody laughed and talked gayly. In a few minutes the lady looked up
and laughed again.
“Look,” she said, “now there are three!”
And there were six legs dangling, and the second and third pair were
little girls’ legs, and their owners looked on at the strangers with
cheerful composure, as if their assistance at the festive scene were
the most proper and natural thing in the world.
The lady who had seen them first was a tall and handsome Englishwoman.
She had big coils of reddish-brown hair, and large bright eyes which
looked restless and tired at the same time. Everybody seemed to pay
her a great deal of attention. The party was hers, the carriages were
hers, the big footmen were hers. Her guests called her Lady Aileen.
She was a very rich young widow with no children, and though she had
everything that wealth and rank could give she found it rather hard to
amuse herself. Perhaps this was because she had given everything to
Lady Aileen Chalmer that she could, and it had not yet occurred to her
that any one else in the world was any affair of hers.
“The Bothwicks came home in raptures over a child they had seen,” she
said; “they talked of him until it was fatiguing. They said he was as
dirty as a pig and as beautiful as an angel. The rest of the children
seemed to use him as a bait. I wish they would bring him to-day; I
should like to see him. I must say I don’t believe he was as beautiful
as they said. You know Mary Bothwick is by way of being artistic, and
is given to raptures.”
“Are you fond of children, Lady Aileen?” asked the man nearest to her.
“I don’t know,” she answered, “I never had one. But I think they are
amusing. And these little Italian beggars are sometimes very handsome.
Perhaps I should not be so bored if I had a very good-looking child. I
should want a boy. I believe I will buy one from a peasant some day.
They will give you anything for money.” She turned her face a little,
and laughed as she had done before.
“There are quite twelve on the wall now,” she said, “perhaps more.
I must count them.” When they counted them they found there were
fourteen, all in a row, all with dangling feet, all dirty, and all
staring at what was going on with a composure which had no shadow of
embarrassment touching it.
The row having gained in numbers was also beginning to be a little more
lively. The young spectators had begun to exchange conversational and
lively remarks upon the party, the big footmen, and the inviting things
being handed about and eaten.
In ten minutes from that time Lady Aileen counted again and found there
were twenty-two lookers-on, and when she reached the twenty-first she
gave a slight start.
“Dear me!” she exclaimed, and laid down her fork.
“What is it, Lady Aileen?” asked a girl who sat at her side.
“I am perfectly certain the twenty-first one is the child the
Bothwicks were talking about. And he _is_ a handsome creature!”
“Which one?” the girl exclaimed, leaning forward to look. “The
twenty-first. Oh, I am sure you mean the one next to the end. What a
beauty! Mr. Gordon, look at him!”
And Maria had the encouragement of seeing half a dozen people turn to
look at Piccino sitting by her on the wall, a marvel of soft roundness
and rich color, his velvet eyes dreamily wide open as he gazed fixedly
at the good things to eat, his crimson bow of a mouth with parted lips,
his flaming tulips nodding round his torn felt hat.
Lady Aileen looked quite interested.
“I never saw such a beautiful little animal,” she said. “I had no
idea children were ever really like that. He looks as if he had been
deliberately made to order. But I should never have had the imagination
to order anything so perfect.”
In a very few minutes everybody was looking at him and discussing him.
Maria saw them and all the other children saw them, and the whole party
began to congratulate itself and feel its spirits exhilarated, because
it knew how the matter would end. The only one who was not exactly
exhilarated was, it must be confessed, Piccino himself. He felt a
certain shy awkwardness when he was looked at and talked about so much.
He was not much more than a baby, after all, and he liked the cakes
and little birds’ backs much better than he liked being looked at by
so many grand ladies and gentlemen all at once. Perhaps, too, if the
truth were told, he was not as thrifty as Maria and her companions. He
liked the good things, but he did not like to ask for them, whereas the
others did not object to begging at all. It was second nature to them.
On this occasion Maria, seeing what effect he had produced, wanted to
lift him down from the wall and put him on the grass, and make him go
among the _signori_ and hold out his hand.
But he clung to her and shook his head and stuck out his vermilion
under lip, and would not go.
It was when he was doing this and Maria was whispering to him, and
scolding and coaxing, that Lady Aileen called to one of her footmen and
told him to bring her a plateful of cakes and some _marrons glacés_.
“Does your ladyship wish me to take them to the beggar children?” asked
Thomas, his distaste suppressed by respectful civility.
“No,” Lady Aileen answered, rising to her feet. “I am going to take
them myself.”
“Yes, my lady,” said Thomas, and stepped back. “It would have been
safer to have let me do it,” he remarked in a discreet undertone when
he returned to his fellows. “Ladies’ dresses are more liable to touch
them by accident; and one wouldn’t want to _touch_ them.”
Lady Aileen carried her plate to the line of spectators on the wall.
Mr. Gordon and two or three others of the party followed her. All along
the row eyes began to glisten and mouths to water, but Lady Aileen went
straight to Piccino. She spoke to him in Italian.
“What is your name?” she asked.
He hung back a little, keeping close to Maria. This was just what he
did not like at all—that they would come and ask him his name and try
to make him talk. He had nothing to say to people like them. He could
talk to the donkey, but then the donkey was of his own world and they
knew each other’s language.
“Tell the signora your name,” whispered Maria, furtively pushing him.
“Piccino,” he said at length, the word coming through a little
reluctant pout.
Lady Aileen laughed.
“He says his name is Piccino,” she said to her companions. “That means
‘little one,’ so I suppose it is a sort of pet name. How old is he?”
she asked Maria.
Piccino was so tired of hearing that. They always asked it. He never
asked how old they were. He did not want to know.
“He will be six in three months,” said Maria.
“Will you have some cakes?” said Lady Aileen. Piccino held out his
horribly dirty, dimpled hands, but Maria took off his hat with the
tulips round it and held it out for him.
“If the _illustrissima_ will put them in here,” she said, “he can carry
them better.”
Lady Aileen gave a little shudder, but she emptied the plate.
“What an awful hat!” she said to her friends. “They are quite like
little pigs—but he looks almost prettier without it. Look how wonderful
his hair is. It has dark red lights in it, and is as thick as a mat.
The curls are like the cherubs’ of the Sistine Madonna. If it were not
so dirty I should have liked to put my hand on it.”
She spoke in English, and Piccino wondered what she was saying about
him. He knew it was about him, and he looked at her from under his veil
of lashes.
“It would please me to have a child as handsome as that about me,” she
said.
“Why don’t you buy him?” said Mr. Gordon; “you spoke of buying one just
now. It would be like buying a masterpiece.”
“So it would,” said Lady Aileen. “That’s an idea. I think I will buy
him. I believe he would amuse me.”
“For a while, at least,” said Mr. Gordon.
“He would always be well taken care of,” said her ladyship, with a
practical air. “He would be infinitely better off than he is now.”
* * * * *
She was a person who through all her life had cultivated the habit of
getting all she had a fancy for. If one cultivates the habit, and has
plenty of money, there are not many things one cannot have. There are
some, it is true, but not many. Lady Aileen had not found many. Just
now she was rather more bored than usual. Before she had left England
something had occurred which had rather troubled her. In fact, she had
come to the Riviera to forget it in change of surroundings. She had
been to Monte Carlo and had found it too exciting and not new enough,
as she had been there often before. She had been to Nice, and had said
it was too much like a seaside Paris, and that there were so many
English people that walking down the Promenade des Anglais was like
walking down Bond Street. She had tried San Remo because it was quiet,
and she had a temporary fancy for being quiet, and then she had chanced
to meet some people she liked. So she had taken a snow-white villa high
above the sea, and with palms and orange-trees and slender yellow-green
bamboos in the garden. And she had invited her new acquaintances to
dinner and afternoon tea, and had made up excursions. Still, she was
often bored, and wanted some new trifle to amuse her. And actually,
when she saw Piccino, and Mr. Gordon suggested to her that she
should buy him, it occurred to her that she would try it. If she had
chanced to come upon a tiny, pretty, rare monkey or toy terrier, or
an unheard-of kind of parrot or cockatoo, she would have tried the
experiment of buying it; and Piccino, with his dirty, beautiful little
face and his half-inch eyelashes, did not seem much more serious to
her. He would cost more money, of course, as she would have to provide
for him in some way after he had grown too big to amuse her; but she
had plenty of money, and she need not trouble herself about him. She
need not see him if she did not wish to, after she had sent him to
school, or to be trained into some kind of superior servant. Lady
Aileen was not a person whose conscience disturbed her, and caused her
to feel responsibilities. And so, after the party had been to explore
Ceriani and the things that otherwise interested them, she asked Mr.
Gordon to go with her to the poor little tumble-down house which Maria
had pointed out to her as the home of Piccino. Maria had, in fact,
had a rich harvest. Everybody had returned full of good things, and
Piccino’s small pocket was rich with _soldi_.
“I am going to carry out your suggestion,” Lady Aileen said to Mr.
Gordon, as they walked down the road.
“What was it?” Mr. Gordon asked.
“That I should buy the child.”
“Indeed,” said Mr. Gordon. “You find you can always buy what you have a
fancy for?”
“Nearly always,” said Lady Aileen, knitting her handsome white forehead
a little; “I have no doubt I can buy this thing I have a fancy for.”
It chanced that she came exactly at the right moment. As they
approached the house they heard even louder cries and lamentations and
railings than Piccino had heard in the morning.
It appeared that old Beppo had repented his leniency and had come back
for the donkey. He would not let it stay another night. He wanted to
work it himself. He had brought his piece of rope and had fastened it
to the pretty gray head already, while Piccino’s mother, Rita, wept and
gesticulated and poured forth maledictions. The neighbors had come back
to sympathize with her and find out what would happen, and the children
had begun to cry and Annibale to swear, so that there was such a noise
filling the air that if Lady Aileen had not been a cool and determined
person she might have been alarmed.
But she was not. She did not wait for Mr. Gordon to command order, but
walked straight into the midst of the altercation.
“What is the matter?” she demanded in Italian, “what is all this noise
about?”
Then, after their first start of surprise at seeing the grand lady, who
was so plainly one of the rich _forestieri_, Rita and all her neighbors
began to explain their wrongs at once. They praised the donkey and
reviled Annibale, and proclaimed that old Beppo was a malefactor
without a soul, and a robber of the widow and the fatherless.
“Far better,” cried Rita, “that my children should be without a father.
An idle, ugly brute, who takes their bread out of their poor mouths. To
sell their one friend who keeps them—the donkey!”
Old Beppo looked both sheepish and frightened when Lady Aileen turned
upon him as he was beginning to try to shuffle away with his property
at the end of his rope halter.
“Stay where you are!” she said.
“_Illustrissima_,” mumbled Beppo, “a thousand excuses. But I have work
to do, and the donkey is mine. I have bought it. It is my donkey,
_illustrissima_.”
Lady Aileen knew Italy very well. She drew out her purse, that he might
see it in her hand, before she turned away from him.
“Stay where you are,” she said. “I shall have something to say to you
later.”
Then she turned to Rita.
“Stop making a noise,” she said. “I want to talk to you.”
“What could the illustrious signora have to say to a wretched woman?”
Rita wept. “All her children must starve; she must starve herself;
death from cold and hunger lay before them!”
“No such thing,” said Lady Aileen. “I will buy your donkey back, and
give you food and fuel for the winter—for more than one winter—if you
will let me have what I want.”
Rita and the neighbors exclaimed in chorus. If she could have what she
wanted, the most illustrious signora! What could she want that a hovel
could hold, and what could such poor creatures refuse her?
Lady Aileen made a gesture towards Piccino, who had gone to stand by
the donkey, and had big tears on his eyelashes as he fondled its nose.
“I want you to lend me your little boy,” she said. “I want to take him
home with me and keep him. It will be much better for him.”
The neighbors all exclaimed in chorus. Rita for a moment only stared.
“Piccino!” she said at length. “You want to take him—to make him your
child!” And aside she exclaimed: “Mother of God? it is his eyelashes!”
Lady Aileen shrugged her shoulders slightly. “I cannot make him my
child,” she said, “but I will take care of him. He shall live with me,
and be fed and clothed, and shall enjoy himself.”
Maria clutched at her mother’s apron.
“Mother,” she said, “he will be a _signorino_. He will ride in the
carriage of the _illustrissima_. It will be as if he were a prince.”
“As if he were a prince!” the neighbors echoed. “As if he were a king’s
son!” And they all looked at dirty little Piccino with a growing awe.
Rita looked at him too. She had never been a very motherly person,
and these children, who had given her such hard work and hard fare,
had been a combined trial and burden to her. She had never felt it
fair that they should have come upon her. Each one had seemed an added
calamity, and when Piccino had been born he had seemed a heavier weight
than all the rest.
It was indeed well for him that his eyelashes had begun to earn his
living so early. And now, if he could save their daily bread and the
donkey for them, it would be a sort of excuse for his having intruded
himself upon the world. But Rita was not the woman to let him go for a
nothing.
“He is as beautiful as an angel,” she said. “He has brought in many a
_lira_ only because the _forestieri_ admire him so. His eyelashes are
an inch long. When he is old enough to sing——”
Lady Aileen spoke aside to Mr. Gordon.
“I told you that I believed I could buy this thing I fancied,” she
said.
To Rita she said:
“Tell me what you want. I will give you a reasonable sum. But you will
be foolish if you try to be extortionate. I want him—but not so much
that I will be robbed.”
“I should be a foolish woman if I tried to keep him,” said Rita; “he
will have nothing to eat to-night if he stays here, nor to-morrow, nor
the day after, unless a miracle happens. The illustrious signora will
give him a good home, and will buy back the donkey and save us from
starvation? I can come sometimes to the villa of the signora and see
him?”
“Yes,” said Lady Aileen, practically, “and the servants will always
give you a good meal and something to carry home with you. You can have
him back at any time if you want him.”
She said this for two reasons. One was because she knew his mother was
not likely to want him back, because he would always be a source of
small revenue. And then she herself was not a person of the affections,
and if the woman made herself in the least tiresome, she was not likely
to feel it a grief to part with the child. She only wanted him to amuse
her.
How it was all arranged Piccino did not in the least know. As he stood
by the donkey his mother and the neighbors, his father and Beppo and
the illustrious lady, all talked together. He knew they were talking
of him, because he heard his own name, but he was too little to listen
or care.
Maria listened to good purpose, however. She was wildly excited and
exhilarated. Before the bargain was half concluded she slipped over to
Piccino’s side and tried to make him understand.
“The signora is going to buy back the donkey,” she said, “and give us
money besides, and you are going back in her beautiful carriage to San
Remo, to live in her magnificent villa, and be a _signorino_, and have
everything you want. You will be dressed like the king’s son, and have
servants. You will be as rich as the _forestieri_.”
Piccino gave her a rather timid look. He was not a beloved nursery
darling, he was only a pretty little animal who was only noticed
because he was another mouth to feed; he was not of half as much
consequence as the donkey. But the dirty place where he ate and slept
was his home, and it gave him a queer feeling to think of tumbling
about in a strange house.
But Maria was so delighted, and seemed to think he had such luck, and
everybody got up a sort of excitement about him, and he did not want
the donkey to be sold, and he was too young to realize that he could
not come back as often as he liked. And in the end, when the matter
was actually settled, he found himself part of a sort of triumphal
procession which escorted him back to the place where the carriages
were. His mother and Maria and several of the neighbors walked quite
proudly along the road with him, and even old Beppo followed at a
distance, and the donkey, having been freed from the halter, and taking
an interest in her friends, loitered along also, cropping grass as she
went.
Lady Aileen and Mr. Gordon had gone on before them. When they reached
the place where the rest of the party was waiting, Lady Aileen
explained the rather remarkable thing she had done, and did so with her
usual direct coolness.
“I have bought the child with the eyelashes,” she said, “and I am going
to take him back to San Remo on the box with the coachman. He is too
dirty to come near us until he is washed.”
She was a person whom nobody thought of questioning, because she never
questioned herself. She simply did what it occurred to her to do, and
felt her own wish quite enough reason. She did not care in the least
whether people thought her extraordinary or not. That was their affair,
and not hers.
“You have bought Piccino!” one of her friends exclaimed. “Does that
mean you are going to adopt him?”
“I have not thought of it as seriously as that,” said Lady Aileen. “I
am going to take him home and have him thoroughly washed, however.
When he is clean I will decide what I shall do next. The thing that
interests me at present is, that I am curious to see what he will look
like when he has had a warm bath all over, and has been puffed with
violet powder, and had his hair combed. I want to see it done. I wonder
what he will think is happening to him. Nicholson will have to take
care of him until I find him a nurse. Look at his relatives and friends
escorting him in procession down the road. They have already begun to
regard him with veneration.”
She beckoned to one of the men servants.
“Greggs,” she said, “you and Hepburn must put the child between you on
the box. He is going back to San Remo with me. See that he does not
fall off.”
Greggs went to the coachman, with a queer expression of the nostrils.
“We’ve got a nice bunch of narcissuses to carry back between us. Her
ladyship says the boy is to go with us on the box.”
“A nice go that is for two men that’s a bit particular themselves,”
said the coachman. “Let’s hope he won’t give us both typhus fever.”
And under these auspices Piccino went forth to his strange experience.