nose. In despair he let it alone.

Next he made the mouth.

No sooner was it finished than it began to laugh and poke fun at him.

"Stop laughing!" said Geppetto angrily; but he might as well have spoken
to the wall.

"Stop laughing, I say!" he roared in a voice of thunder.

The mouth stopped laughing, but it stuck out a long tongue.

Not wishing to start an argument, Geppetto made believe he saw nothing
and went on with his work. After the mouth, he made the chin, then the
neck, the shoulders, the stomach, the arms, and the hands.

As he was about to put the last touches on the finger tips, Geppetto
felt his wig being pulled off. He glanced up and what did he see? His
yellow wig was in the Marionette's hand. "Pinocchio, give me my wig!"

But instead of giving it back, Pinocchio put it on his own head, which
was half swallowed up in it.

At that unexpected trick, Geppetto became very sad and downcast, more so
than he had ever been before.

"Pinocchio, you wicked boy!" he cried out. "You are not yet finished,
and you start out by being impudent to your poor old father. Very bad,
my son, very bad!"

And he wiped away a tear.

The legs and feet still had to be made. As soon as they were done,
Geppetto felt a sharp kick on the tip of his nose.

"I deserve it!" he said to himself. "I should have thought of this
before I made him. Now it's too late!"

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. He came to the open door, and with one leap he
was out into the street. Away he flew!

Poor Geppetto ran after him but was unable to catch him, for Pinocchio
ran in leaps and bounds, his two wooden feet, as they beat on the stones
of the street, making as much noise as twenty peasants in wooden shoes.

"Catch him! Catch him!" Geppetto kept shouting. But the people in the
street, seeing a wooden Marionette running like the wind, stood still to
stare and to laugh until they cried.

At last, by sheer luck, a Carabineer* happened along, who, hearing all
that noise, thought that it might be a runaway colt, and stood bravely
in the middle of the street, with legs wide apart, firmly resolved to
stop it and prevent any trouble.