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THE ADVENTURES OF PINOCCHIO
PART 1 CHAPTER 7
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Geppetto gives his own breakfast to the puppet.
THE POOR PUPPET was still half asleep. He had not yet found out that his two feet were burned and gone. As soon as he heard his father's voice, he jumped up to open the door, but, of course, when he did that he fell to the floor.
When he fell, he made as much noise as large bag of wooden spoons falling from the top floor of a tall house.
Geppetto did not know what all the noise was about. "Open the door!" he yelled from the street.
"Father, dear Father, I can't," answered the puppet, crying and trying hard to pull himself across the floor to the door.
"Why not?"
"Someone has eaten my feet."
"What? Eaten your feet? Who has eaten your feet?"
Pinocchio had no idea what had happened. He saw Geppetto's little cat busily playing with some pieces of wood. "I think it was the cat!" he called out.
"Open! I say," shouted Geppetto. "If you don't I'll give you a good beating when I get in."
"Father, believe me, I can't stand up. Oh, dear! I shall have to walk on my knees for the rest of my life."
Geppetto thought that all these tears and cries were just some more of the naughty puppet's tricks. He walked round to the side of the house, and climbed in through the little window.
At first Geppetto was angry, but when he saw Pinocchio lying on the floor and really without feet, he felt sad. Tears ran down the old man's cheeks. Picking the puppet up from the floor, he hugged him and talked to him.
"My little Pinocchio, my dear little Pinocchio! How did you burn your feet?"
"I don't know, Father, but believe me, I had a really bad time last night. I shall remember it for as long as I live. The thunder was so loud and the lightning so bright --and I was so hungry. And then the Talking Cricket said to me, 'It is your own fault; you were bad,' and I said to him, 'Careful, Cricket,' and he said to me, `You are a puppet and you have no brains,' and then I threw the hammer at him and killed him. I am sure it was his fault, for I didn't want to kill him. And I put the pan on the foot warmer to cook an egg, but the chick flew away and said, 'Good-bye and good luck to you, young Sir, and give my thanks to your father, too, for letting my egg stay here so long.' And I got hungrier and hungrier, and I went out, and an old man looked out of his bedroom window and threw water on me, and I came home and put my feet on the foot warmer to dry them, and I was still hungry, and I fell asleep and now my feet are gone but . . . but I am still very, very hungry! Oh!--Oh!--Oh!"
And poor Pinocchio began to scream and cry so loudly that everyone for miles around could hear him.
Geppetto had understood only one thing of all that --that the puppet was hungry. He felt sorry for him. He pulled three pears out of his pocket, and put them on the table.
"These were for my breakfast," he said, "but I will give them to you. Eat them, now, and stop all this crying and screaming."
Pinocchio became quiet and looked at the pears. He had never seen a pear before. "Peel them for me, please," he said.
"Peel them?" said Geppetto, surprised. "Why do you want them peeled? Are you not going to eat the skin? That's bad, my boy! In this world, even as children, we must eat every bit of what is given us; good food should never be wasted!"
"I shan't eat them if you don't peel them," said Pinocchio. "I am sure I don't like pear skins."
So good old Geppetto took out a knife and peeled the three pears, but he left the peelings on the table.
Pinocchio ate one pear quickly. He ate almost all of it, but not, of course, that part in the middle --the core. He was just going to throw the core away, when Geppetto took hold of his arm.
"Oh, no, don't throw that away! Remember, you mustn't waste good food."
"But it's only the core, Father! No one likes to eat cores," cried Pinocchio.
"You never know!" said Geppetto.
And soon afterwards three cores were placed on the table next to the peelings.
When Pinocchio had eaten the three pears, he looked at Geppetto and said: "I'm still hungry."
"But I have nothing else to give you."
"Really, nothing --nothing at all?"
"Just these three pear cores and the peelings. I have already told you . . . "
"Oh, don't get angry again, dear Father," said Pinocchio. "If there is nothing else, I'll eat them."
And, one after another, the peelings and the cores went down.
"Ah! Now I feel fine!" he said with a smile, after eating the last one.
"You see," said Geppetto, "I was right when I told you not to waste good food. Dear boy, you never know when you might want something --even pear peelings and cores! If we had thrown them away, you would still be hungry!"