let? No, it would be
better to cook it in a saucer! Or would it not be more savory to fry it
in the frying-pan? Or shall I simply boil it? No, the quickest way of
all is to cook it in a saucer: I am in such a hurry to eat it!"

Without loss of time he placed an earthenware saucer on a brazier full
of red-hot embers. Into the saucer instead of oil or butter he poured a
little water; and when the water began to smoke, tac! he broke the
egg-shell over it and let the contents drop in. But, instead of the
white and the yolk a little chicken popped out very gay and polite.
Making a beautiful courtesy it said to him:

"A thousand thanks, Master Pinocchio, for saving me the trouble of
breaking the shell. Adieu until we meet again. Keep well, and my best
compliments to all at home!"

Thus saying, it spread its wings, darted through the open window and,
flying away, was lost to sight.

The poor puppet stood as if he had been bewitched, with his eyes fixed,
his mouth open, and the egg-shell in his hand. Recovering, however, from
his first stupefaction, he began to cry and scream, and to stamp his
feet on the floor in desperation, and amidst his sobs he said:

"Ah, indeed, the Talking-Cricket was right. If I had not run away from
home, and if my papa were here, I should not now be dying of hunger! Oh!
what a dreadful illness hunger is!"

And, as his stomach cried out more than ever and he did not know how to
quiet it, he thought he would leave the house and make an excursion in
the neighborhood in hopes of finding some charitable person who would
give him a piece of bread.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER VI

PINOCCHIO'S FEET BURN TO CINDERS

It was a wild and stormy night. The thunder was tremendous and the
lightning so vivid that the sky seemed on fire.

Pinocchio had a great fear of thunder, but hunger was stronger than
fear. He therefore closed the house door and made a rush for the
village, which he reached in a hundred bounds, with his tongue hanging
out and panting for breath like a dog after game.

But he found it all dark and deserted. The shops were closed, the
windows shut, and there was not so much as a dog in the street. It
seemed the land of the dead.

Pinocchio, urged by desperation and hunger, took hold of the bell of a
house and began to ring it with all his might, saying to himself:

"That will bring somebody."

And so it did. A little old man appeared at a window with a night-cap on
his head a