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.”