It was just after the luncheon hour in the Children’s House, and the babies filled the sunshiny paths of the garden or loitered in happy groups in the cool stone cloister of the Convent.
“My mother told me the story of Pinocchio, the wooden marionette, who had so many adventures with a cricket for his friend, and also a fairy with blue hair. It is too wonderful a story to have been born in the mind of my mother. She found it. I have it now, with me!”
There was a breathless hush among the little ones. Pairs of blue and hazel eyes fixed every motion of the little brown maid in the bright pink apron. With slow dignity and an effect of great mystery Olga thrust one chubby hand into the depths of her pocket. The fingers fumbled a bit, then pulled out a crumpled, printed page torn from a book. Dropping, cross-legged, to the stone floor of the cloister, Olga unfolded and spread out the page in her lap. The others bent over her with all the curiosity and reverence that would be stimulated by a conjurer.
“Here is the mystery,” Olga announced, indicating the printed words. “I have discovered that this is the hiding place of Pinocchio. I have torn it out of the book that I may carry it, always, in my pocket.”
“Olga will carry Pinocchio in her pocket,” the others exclaimed in hushed whispers, scattering to talk over the matter. “Is it possible that we, too, could find Pinocchio, as Olga has, and carry him in our pockets?”
So it happened that the mothers of the children of the Via Giusti School began to miss pages from their newspapers, their magazines, their books.
“We have very bad, destructive children,” they decided, not stopping to question the reason for their little ones’ sudden interest in written language.
So it happened, also, that the directress of the school, always alert to watch the mind phenomena of her children, noticed that many children in the school had torn bits of printed pages hidden in their apron pockets, in the soles of their shoes, in their caps. In the midst of their most fascinating work, they would stop, take out these scraps of print, smooth them, and trace the letters with baby fingers.
“We have stories with us all the time; Pinocchio is ours,” they said.
“My little discoverers!” the far-seeing directress exclaimed. “They are not wilfully destructive. They are ready, now, to create a new language that will carry them farther than spoken words can. Their longings shall be satisfied.”