“There!” she said. “Now I think he is clean, for the first time in his life. Nicholson, you may rub him dry.” She stood up, laughing, and rather flushed with exertion. “It has amused me,” she said to Isobel; “I would not have believed it, but it _has_ amused me. Almost anything new will amuse one the first time one does it. When you have brushed his hair, Nicholson, put him to bed.” She laid aside the apron and picked up her gloves. She went out of the room, smiling, and Piccino was left to the big white cloths and Nicola. What happened then was even more tiresome than the bath, though it was not so alarming. He was rubbed as if he were a little horse, and his hair received treatment which seemed to him incredible. When it was dry, strange instruments were used upon it. The knots and tangles were struggled with and dragged out. Sometimes it seemed as if his curls were being pulled out by the roots, sometimes as if his head itself was to be taken off. It seemed to him that he stood hours by Nicola’s knee, whimpering. If Maria had been rash enough to attempt to subject him to such indignities he would have kicked and screamed and fought, but in this wonderful house, among these wonderful people who were all _forestieri_, he was terror-stricken by his sense of strangeness. To be plunged into water—to be rubbed and scrubbed—to have the hair dragged from one’s head—who would not be terrified? Suddenly he buried his face in Nicola’s lap and broke into woful weeping. “_Voglio andare a casa. Lasciammi andare a Maria ed il ciuco!_” (I want to go home. Let me go home to Maria—and the donkey!) he cried. “Well, well, it is nearly done now,” said Nicholson, “and a nice job it has been. And what I am to put you to bed in I don’t know, unless in one of her ladyship’s own dressing-jackets.” “_Voglio andare a casa!_” he wept. But Nicholson did not understand him in the least. She went and found one of the dressing-jackets and brought it back to the bathroom. It was covered with rich lace and tied with ribbons; it was too big, and he was lost in it; but when Nicholson bundled him up in it, and he stood with the lace frills dangling over his hands, and his beautiful little face and head rising above the great, rich ruff they made, he was a wonderful sight to see. But he was not aware of it, and only felt as if he were dressed in strange trickery; and when he was picked up and carried out of the room—the beautiful trousers of Sandro being left on the floor in the corner—he felt that the final indignity had been offered. She carried him into one of the wonderful rooms he had caught a glimpse of. It was all blue, and was so amazing with its frills and blue flowers and lace and ornaments that he thought it must be a place where some other strange thing was to be done to him. But Nicola only put him down on a soft place covered with lace, and with a sort of tent of lace and silk at the top of it.