"You young rascal! You are not yet completed and you are already beginning to show want of respect to your father! That is bad, my boy, very bad!"
And he dried a tear.
The legs and the feet remained to be done.
When Geppetto had finished the feet he received a kick on the point of his nose.
"I deserve it!" he said to himself; "I should have thought of it sooner! Now it is too late!"
He then took the puppet under the arms and placed him on the floor to teach him to walk.
Pinocchio's legs were stiff and he could not move, but Geppetto led him by the hand and showed him how to put one foot before the other.
When his legs became limber Pinocchio began to walk by himself and to run about the room, until, having gone out of the house door, he jumped into the street and escaped.
Poor Geppetto rushed after him but was not able to overtake him, for that rascal Pinocchio leaped in front of him like a hare and knocking his wooden feet together against the pavement made as much clatter as twenty pairs of peasants' clogs.
"Stop him! stop him!" shouted Geppetto; but the people in the street, seeing a wooden puppet running like a race-horse, stood still in astonishment to look at it, and laughed and laughed.