Page:Piccino and Other Child Stories (1897).djvu/42

30 "What was it?" Mr. Gordon asked.

"That I should buy the child."

"Indeed," said Mr. Gordon. "You find you can always buy what you have a fancy for?"

"Nearly always," said Lady Aileen, knitting her handsome white forehead a little; "I have no doubt I can buy this thing I have a fancy for."

It chanced that she came exactly at the right moment. As they approached the house they heard even louder cries and lamentations and railings than Piccino had heard in the morning.

It appeared that old Beppo had repented his leniency and had come back for the donkey. He would not let it stay another night. He wanted to work it himself. He had brought his piece of rope and had fastened it to the pretty gray head already, while Piccino's mother, Rita, wept and gesticulated and poured forth maledictions. The neighbors had come back to sympathize with her and find out what would happen, and the children had begun to cry and Annibale to swear, so that there was such a noise filling the air that if Lady Aileen had not been a cool and determined person she might have been alarmed.

But she was not. She did not wait for Mr. Gordon to command order, but walked straight into the midst of the altercation.

"What is the matter?" she demanded in Italian, "what is all this noise about?"