Adventures of Major Gahagan | Page 6

down angrily:
"What do you want at this hour of night?"
"Will you be good enough to give me a bit of bread? I am hungry."
"Wait a minute and I'll come right back," answered the old fellow,
thinking he had to deal with one of those boys who love to roam around
at night ringing people's bells while they are peacefully asleep.

After a minute or two, the same voice cried:
"Get under the window and hold out your hat!"
Pinocchio had no hat, but he managed to get under the window just in
time to feel a shower of ice-cold water pour down on his poor wooden
head, his shoulders, and over his whole body.
He returned home as wet as a rag, and tired out from weariness and
hunger.
As he no longer had any strength left with which to stand, he sat down
on a little stool and put his two feet on the stove to dry them.
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.

CHAPTER 7
Geppetto returns home and gives his own breakfast to the Marionette
The poor Marionette, who was still half asleep, 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 from his seat to open the door, but, as he
did so, he staggered and fell headlong to the floor.
In falling, he made as much noise as a sack of wood falling from the
fifth story of a house.

"Open the door for me!" Geppetto shouted from the street.
"Father, dear Father, I can't," answered the Marionette in despair,
crying and rolling on the floor.
"Why can't you?"
"Because someone has eaten my feet."
"And who has eaten them?"
"The cat," answered Pinocchio, seeing that little animal busily playing
with some shavings in the corner of the room.
"Open! I say," repeated Geppetto, "or I'll give you a sound whipping
when I get in."
"Father, believe me, I can't stand up. Oh, dear! Oh, dear! I shall have to
walk on my knees all my life."
Geppetto, thinking that all these tears and cries were only other pranks
of the Marionette, climbed up the side of the house and went in through
the window.
At first he was very angry, but on seeing Pinocchio stretched out on the
floor and really without feet, he felt very sad and sorrowful. Picking
him up from the floor, he fondled and caressed him, talking to him
while the tears ran down his cheeks:
"My little Pinocchio, my dear little Pinocchio! How did you burn your
feet?"
"I don't know, Father, but believe me, the night has been a terrible one
and I shall remember it as long as I live. The thunder was so noisy and
the lightning so bright--and I was hungry. And then the Talking Cricket
said to me, 'You deserve it; you were bad;' and I said to him, 'Careful,
Cricket;' and he said to me, 'You are a Marionette and you have a
wooden head;' and I threw the hammer at him and killed him. It was his
own fault, for I didn't want to kill him. And I put the pan on the coals,

but the Chick flew away and said, 'I'll see you again! Remember me to
the family.' And my hunger grew, and I went out, and the old man with
a nightcap looked out of the window and threw water on me, and I
came home and put my feet on the stove to dry them because I was still
hungry, and I fell asleep and now my feet are gone but my hunger isn't!
Oh!--Oh!--Oh!" And poor Pinocchio began to scream and cry so loudly
that he could be heard for miles around.
Geppetto, who had understood nothing of all that jumbled talk, except
that the Marionette was hungry, felt sorry for him, and pulling three
pears out of his pocket, offered them to him, saying:
"These three pears were for my breakfast, but I give them to you gladly.
Eat them and stop weeping."
"If you want me to eat them, please peel them for me."
"Peel them?" asked Geppetto, very much surprised. "I should never
have thought, dear boy of mine, that you were so dainty and fussy
about your food. Bad, very bad! In this world, even as children, we
must accustom ourselves