Chapter SevenAs retold for Aaron
Geppetto returns home and gives his breakfast to the Marionette Pinocchio, who was still half asleep, and had yet to realize that his two feet were burned and gone.
 Pinocchio, who was still half asleep, had yet to realize 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, only to fall headlong to the floor.
When he fell, he made as much noise as a sack of wood tossed from the fifth story of a house.
In case you don't know, that is very loud. When Pinocchio fell his little wooden limbs made a great clattering, racket.
"Pinocchio!" Geppetto shouted from the street. "What's that noise! Open the door!"
In despair, crying and rolling on the floor, the Marionette cried out, "Father, I can't!"
"Why can't you?"
"Because someone has eaten my feet," the Marionette sobbed.
"And who has eaten them?" Geppetto shouted back, thinking that the Marionette was playing a joke.
Pinocchio looked about the room to see what might have eaten his feet and saw the cat busily playing with some shavings in the corner. Shavings which must have been his own feet! "The cat," answered Pinocchio. "The cat has eaten my feet!"
"No more jokes, Pinocchio!" Geppetto yelled. "You open this door immediately or I'll give you a sound whipping when I get in!"
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This is how some people deal with any problem, especially what they consider to be problems with children or animals, which tells you a little bit how they see children and animals. They think a sound whipping is the way to fix anything, meaning that they think the child or animal should be doing what they want, and if they are not then you whip them--as if making a child behave a certain way out of fear is fixing anything!
"Father, believe me, I can't stand up," Pinocchio cried. "Oh, dear! Oh, dear! I shall have to walk on my knees all my life!"
Geppetto, still thinking that all these tears and cries were pranks, climbed up the side of the house and went in through the window under the stairs.
At first, the craftsman was angry. Then he saw Pinocchio stretched out on the floor without any feet! Astonished, Geppetto ran to the Marionette and lifted him off the floor.
Filled with sorrow, the craftsman hugged the poor Pinocchio, tears running down his cheeks. "My little Pinocchio, my dear little Pinocchio!" he cried. "How did you burn your feet?"
"I don't know, Father," Pinocchio said, also crying and holding tight to Geppetto's shirt, "but believe me, the night was a terrible one. I shall remember it as long as I live. The thunder was so noisy, and the lightning was so bright, and I was so, so hungry! And then the Talking Cricket told me, 'You deserve it, you were bad,' and I said to him, 'Cricket be quiet or I will get angry like Geppetto,' and he said to me, 'You are only a Marionette with a wooden head,' and I threw your hammer at him but I had no idea it would kill him. I then put the pan on the coals, but a Chick came out of the egg and flew away. I was so hungry that I even went out to beg for food, but the only one who answered me was an old man who threw cold water on me from his window, and I came home all wet and put my feet on the stove to dry them and I was so hungry and I fell asleep and now my feet are gone and I am still so, so, so terribly hungry!"
Geppetto, who had understood almost nothing of all that jumbled talk except that Pinocchio was hungry, pulled three pears out of his pocket. "Look, Pinocchio," he said, wiping tears away from his own wet cheeks, "I have some pears I was going to eat for breakfast. You have them. It didn't occur to me you might be hungry. It didn't even enter my head."
"Why didn't it?" Pinocchio cried. "I don't understand why you carve me into a Marionette and then go off and leave me all alone when the Talking Cricket says I have lots to learn and can't do it all on my own. Everyone is making the world seem such an awful place when it was so interesting and wonderful to me yesterday afternoon when I was out running through the fields and meadows, and the town was so lively and fun, too."
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"Here, here. You eat your pears and stop weeping," Geppetto tried to calm the puppet.
"If you want me to eat them, please peel them for me," Pinocchio replied, not crying so much.
"Peel them?" Geppetto asked, surprised.
Geppetto's habit had been not to give too much thought to what he got angry about, and here he was getting angry again. "Don’t be dainty and fussy about your food," he scolded the Marionette. "That is bad, very bad! In this world, even as children, we must accustom ourselves to eating everything, for we never know what life may hold in store for us!"
"Oh, this world must be such an awful place if you have to eat unpeeled pears!" Pinocchio cried. "I won't do it. I won't ear the pears unless they're peeled. I don't like the peels."
Geppetto took out a knife, and as he peeled the three pears, he put the skins in a row on the table.
Pinocchio ate the first pear in a twinkling. He was about to throw the core across the room into the trash when Geppetto caught his arm. "No, don't throw it away! Everything in this world may be of some use! Who knows but you might want it later."
"But I won't eat the core!" cried Pinocchio in an angry tone.
"Who knows?" Geppetto calmly repeated.
When Pinocchio had devoured all three pears, the three cores placed on the table next to the skins, he began to cry, "I'm still hungry, Father."
"There is nothing else in the house to eat," Geppetto told him.
"Nothing? Really, nothing at all?"
"Only these three cores and skins."
Pinocchio looked a little while at the cores and skins, then said, "If there is nothing else, I'll eat them, but I wish we had something else."
When Pinocchio was done with the cores and skins, he patted his tummy. "I feel better," he said.
"You see," Geppetto answered, "I was right about the cores and peels, wasn't I? You scorned them, but when you were still hungry you ate them. That is how it is in this world. We never know what life may have in store for us."
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