“I am going to wash you myself,” said Lady Aileen, lifting him in her strong white arms. “Don’t let me have any nonsense. If you make a noise and fight I _will_ drown you.” She was laughing, but Piccino was struck dumb with fear. She looked so tall and powerful and such a grand lady, that he did not know what she might feel at liberty to do in her powerfulness. “It is only a bath,” said the girl Isobel in a kind voice. “The water won’t go over your head. Don’t be frightened, it won’t hurt.” Lady Aileen calmly put him back in the tub. Her white hands were so firm and steady that he felt the uselessness of struggle. And if he fought she might drown him. He looked up piteously at the signorina with the encouraging face and voice, and stood in the water, aghast, and with big tears rolling down his cheeks, but passive in helpless despair. But ah! what strange things were done to him! The illustrious signora took the cake of white stuff and the big porous thing, and rubbed them together in the water and made quantities of snow-white froth; then she rubbed him over and over and over, then she splashed the water over him until she washed the foam off his body, then she scrubbed him with something, then she did strange things to his ears, then she took a little brush and scrubbed his finger-nails—covering them with the white froth and then washing it off—then she did the same thing to his feet and rubbed them with a piece of stone. [Illustration: “‘I AM GOING TO WASH YOU MYSELF,’ SAID LADY AILEEN, LIFTING HIM IN HER STRONG WHITE ARMS”] Then she began with his head. Poor neglected little mop of matted silk, what did she not do to it? She rubbed it with the cake of white stuff till it was a soft, slippery ball of foam, then she scrubbed and scrubbed and thrust her hands in it and shook it about, and almost drowned him with the water she poured on it. If he had not been so frightened he would have yelled. But people who will do such things to you, what will they not do if you make them angry! Under this avalanche of snowy stuff and this torrent of water a wild, despairing memory of Maria and the donkey came back to him. Only last night he had fallen asleep in his corner among all the familiar sights and sounds and smells, and without water coming near him. And now he was nearly up to his neck in it, it was streaming from his hair, his ears, his body—he could hear and see and taste nothing else. Oh! could it be possible that he had been all wrong in that first imagining that perhaps the rushing streams were to amuse him? Could it be that this was all to amuse the _forestieri_ themselves? That they had brought him to San Remo to make him live in water like a fish? That they would never let him out? Suddenly the magnificent signora lifted him out of the pool. She set him streaming upon something soft and white and dry, which Nicola had spread upon the blue and white tiles of the floor.