“Where’s your coat, Father?”
“I have sold it.”
“Why did you sell your coat?”
“It was too warm.”
Pinocchio understood the answer in a twinkling, and, unable to restrain his tears, he jumped on his father’s neck and kissed him over and over.
CHAPTER 9
Pinocchio sells his A-B-C book to pay his way into the Marionette Theater.
See Pinocchio hurrying off to school with his new A-B-C book under his arm! As he walked along, his brain was busy planning hundreds of wonderful things, building hundreds of castles in the air. Talking to himself, he said:
“In school today, I’ll learn to read, tomorrow to write, and the day after tomorrow I’ll do arithmetic. Then, clever as I am, I can earn a lot of money. With the very first pennies I make, I’ll buy Father a new cloth coat. Cloth, did I say? No, it shall be of gold and silver with diamond buttons. That poor man certainly deserves it; for, after all, isn’t he in his shirt sleeves because he was good enough to buy a book for me? On this cold day, too! Fathers are indeed good to their children!”