Page:The adventures of Pinocchio (Cramp 1904).djvu/178

 just laid an egg. In fact, there was such a pandemonium that you would have had to put cotton in your ears.

As soon as Pinocchio, Lamp Wick, and all the other newcomers in this country had arrived, they ran around with the others and began to play. Who could have been happier or more contented than they? “Oh, what a beautiful life this is!” said Pinocchio, running after Lamp Wick.

“See; was I not right?” said the latter. “You did not wish to come. To think that you should want to return to the Fairy’s house and study! If to-day you are free from all the annoyances of school and its troubles, you should thank me. True friends are the only ones who know how to render favors to one another.”

“It is true, Lamp Wick. If to-day I am a free and happy boy, I owe it all to you. Yet the teacher used to say to me, ‘Do not go with Lamp Wick because he is a bad companion.

“Poor Teacher!” replied the other, shaking his head.

So they played in the country for five months. They never saw a book; never studied a minute. They played from morning till night. One morning when Pinocchio awoke he was surprised to find what had happened, and it made him very unhappy.