“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.