This was rankling in his mind as Nicholson pulled him after her down the staircase and through the hall to the breakfast-room. Nicholson was getting rather cross. She had not been engaged as a nurse, but as a maid. And she had had to go through all that scrubbing in the evening, and in the morning had had to rush out and borrow clothes for the child to wear from one of Lady Aileen’s married friends, and she had not enjoyed having to get up and take a walk so early. But her grievance was not so deep a one as Piccino’s. When he was taken into the breakfast-room Lady Aileen made him feel sulkier than ever. It was the way she looked at him, though he did not in the least know why. If he had been old enough he might have known that to be looked at as if one was not a person, but only a curious little animal, is enough to make any one rebellious. She called him to her just as she would have called her black poodle. “Come here!” she said. He went to her, sticking his red mouth out. “What are you pouting for?” she asked. “What is the matter, Nicholson?” “I don’t know, my lady,” answered Nicholson, with rather acid respectfulness. “He doesn’t like to be washed, and he doesn’t like to be dressed. I suppose he’s not used to being kept tidy.” “Kept tidy!” said Lady Aileen, “I should think not. You look very nice in your new clothes,” she added to Piccino, in Italian. “_Ma queste sono vestite di ragazza_,” (But these are girl’s clothes,) he said, pouting. “You will wear what I wish,” said Lady Aileen. “Nicholson, give him some porridge. I am going to feed him as English children are fed. Heaven knows how he will behave at table! I am curious to see.” It was only that—she was curious to see. And the queer breakfast was given to him; not nice black bread and figs, or _pasta_ or salad, but oatmeal porridge, which he had never seen before. He did not like it. It seemed sloppy and flavorless to him, and he would not eat it. He pushed it back, and sat and pouted, and Lady Aileen was amused, and sat and talked English to the visitors who were at table with her, and they told each other how pretty he was and how like a picture, and how interesting it was that, in spite of being dressed like an English child and given porridge to eat, he was still more than ever nothing but a beautiful little Italian peasant. And all the day was like that, and baby as he was he raged within his little soul, knowing somehow that he was only there to be looked at and remarked upon, and to amuse them by being a curiosity. They took him out in a grand carriage and drove him about the town, taking him to shops and buying clothes for him—always _roba di donna_—and when they were tried on, and he looked angry, Lady Aileen laughed, and even the men or women in the shops made jokes aside. He would have liked to fly at them and kill them, but they were so big and he was so little—only Piccino from Ceriani.