"Ah! is that the courteous way in which you make your presents, Master Antonio? You have almost lamed me!" "I swear to you that it was not I!" "Then you would have it that it was I?" "The wood is entirely to blame!" "I know that it was the wood; but it was you that hit my legs with it!" "I did not hit you with it!" "Liar!" "Geppetto, don't insult me or I will call you Pudding!" "Knave!" "Pudding!" "Donkey!" "Pudding!" "Baboon!" "Pudding!" On hearing himself called Pudding for the third time Geppetto, mad with rage, fell upon the carpenter and they fought desperately. When the battle was over, Master Antonio had two more scratches on his nose, and his adversary had lost two buttons off his waistcoat. Their accounts being thus squared, they shook hands and swore to remain good friends for the rest of their lives. Geppetto carried off his fine piece of wood and, thanking Master Antonio, returned limping to his house. [Illustration] CHAPTER III GEPPETTO NAMES HIS PUPPET PINOCCHIO Geppetto lived in a small ground-floor room that was only lighted from the staircase. The furniture could not have been simpler--a rickety chair, a poor bed, and a broken-down table. At the end of the room there was a fireplace with a lighted fire; but the fire was painted, and by the fire was a painted saucepan that was boiling cheerfully and sending out a cloud of smoke that looked exactly like real smoke. As soon as he reached home Geppetto took his tools and set to work to cut out and model his puppet. [Illustration: A Little Chicken Popped Out, Very Gay and Polite] "What name shall I give him?" he said to himself; "I think I will call him Pinocchio. It is a name that will bring him luck. I once knew a whole family so called. There was Pinocchio the father, Pinocchia the mother, and Pinocchi the children, and all of them did well. The richest of them was a beggar." Having found a name for his puppet he began to work in good earnest, and he first made his hair, then his forehead, and then his eyes. The eyes being finished, imagine his astonishment when he perceived that they moved and looked fixedly at him. Geppetto, seeing himself stared at by those two wooden eyes, said in an angry voice: "Wicked wooden eyes, why do you look at me?" No one answered. He then proceeded to carve the nose, but no sooner had he made it than it began to grow. And it grew, and grew, and grew, until in a few minutes it had become an immense nose that seemed as if it would never end. Poor Geppetto tired himself out with cutting it off, but the more he cut and shortened it, the longer did that impertinent nose become! The mouth was not even completed when it began to laugh and deride him. "Stop laughing!" said Geppetto, provoked; but he might as well have spoken to the wall. "Stop laughing, I say!" he roared in a threatening tone. The mouth then ceased laughing, but put out its tongue as far as it would go.