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"I am teaching the alphabet to the ants." "Much good may that do you." "What has brought you to me, neighbor Geppetto?" "My legs. But to tell the truth. Master Antonio, I came to ask a favor of you." "Here I am, ready to serve you," replied the carpenter, getting on his knees. "This morning an idea came into my head." "Let us hear it."
And growing angrier each moment, they went from words to blows, and finally began to scratch and bite and slap each other. When the fight was over, Mastro Antonio had Geppetto's yellow wig in his hands and Geppetto found the carpenter's curly wig in his mouth. "Give me back my wig!" shouted Mastro Antonio in a surly voice. "You return mine and we'll be friends."
Eat them, and I hope they will do you good." "If you wish me to eat them, be kind enough to peel them for me." "Peel them?" said Geppetto, astonished. "I should never have thought, my boy, that you were so dainty and fastidious. That is bad! In this world we should accustom ourselves from childhood to like and to eat everything, for there is no saying to what we may be brought.
Over the fire, there was painted a pot full of something which kept boiling happily away and sending up clouds of what looked like real steam. As soon as he reached home, Geppetto took his tools and began to cut and shape the wood into a Marionette. "What shall I call him?" he said to himself. "I think I'll call him PINOCCHIO. This name will make his fortune.
I'll take you there. We flew all night long, and next morning the fishermen were looking toward the sea, crying, 'There is a poor little man drowning, and I knew it was you, because my heart told me so and I waved to you from the shore " "I knew you also," put in Geppetto, "and I wanted to go to you; but how could I? The sea was rough and the whitecaps overturned the boat.
"You see, now," observed Geppetto, "that I was right when I said to you that it did not do to accustom ourselves to be too particular or too dainty in our tastes. We can never know, my dear boy, what may happen to us. There are so many chances!" No sooner had the puppet satisfied his hunger than he began to cry and to grumble because he wanted a pair of new feet.
Poor Geppetto rushed after him but was not able to overtake him, for that rascal Pinocchio leaped in front of him like a hare and knocking his wooden feet together against the pavement made as much clatter as twenty pairs of peasants' clogs.
There he fell asleep, and while he slept, his wooden feet began to burn. Slowly, very slowly, they blackened and turned to ashes. Pinocchio snored away happily as if his feet were not his own. At dawn he opened his eyes just as a loud knocking sounded at the door. "Who is it?" he called, yawning and rubbing his eyes. "It is I," answered a voice. It was the voice of Geppetto.
He took hold of the Marionette under the arms and put him on the floor to teach him to walk. Pinocchio's legs were so stiff that he could not move them, and Geppetto held his hand and showed him how to put out one foot after the other. When his legs were limbered up, Pinocchio started walking by himself and ran all around the room.
They said so much that, finally, the Carabineer ended matters by setting Pinocchio at liberty and dragging Geppetto to prison. The poor old fellow did not know how to defend himself, but wept and wailed like a child and said between his sobs: "Ungrateful boy! To think I tried so hard to make you a well-behaved Marionette! I deserve it, however! I should have given the matter more thought."
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