“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. CHAPTER II He was too well accustomed to his dirt to think of it as being objectionable, so the way in which Greggs lifted him up on to the seat on the box did not at all explain itself to him. He did not realize that in exactly the same manner the excellent Greggs would have handled an extremely dirty little dog her ladyship had chosen to pick up by the wayside and order him to take charge of. But though he did not understand how he was regarded by the illustrious _signori_ in livery who sat near him, he was conscious that he was not comfortable, and felt that somehow they were not exactly friendly. His place on the box seemed at an enormous height from the ground, and as they went down hill over the winding road he was rather frightened, particularly when they rounded a sharp curve. It seemed so probable that he might fall off, and he was afraid to clutch at Greggs, who kept as far from him as possible under the circumstances. It was a long, long drive to San Remo, and it seemed longer to Piccino than it really was. San Remo to him appeared a wonderful foreign country. He had never been there, and only knew of it what Maria had told him. Maria had once gone there in the small cart drawn by the donkey, and she had never forgotten the exaltation of the adventure. She was always willing to describe over again the streets, the white villas, the shops, and the grand hotels.