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.”