After two hours of hard running, Pinocchio, still angry at the treatment he had received, came to a forest. “It’s better to be a bird in the bushes than a bird in a cage!” he thought.
Although the walk in the forest was refreshing, he began, as usual, to be hungry. The place was very beautiful, but beauty could not satisfy a marionette’s appetite. He looked here and there in the hope that he might see trees loaded with the fruit about which the elephant man had spoken. He saw nothing but branches and leaves, leaves and branches. On he walked. Both the forest and his hunger seemed without end.
Fortunately Pinocchio was very strong. Being made of wood, he could endure a great many hardships. He was sure that his good Fairy would come to help him, so he kept on bravely. He had walked a long way before he saw a large tree, bearing fruit that resembled oranges.
“At last!” he cried aloud. The birds flew away at the sound. Pinocchio climbed over the rocks and up the tree as fast as he could.
“I will eat enough to last for a week!” he said, as he thought of the orange peel his father Geppetto had given him for supper.
He picked the largest of the fruit and put it into his mouth. It was as hard as ivory. He pulled out his penknife, with which he used to sharpen his pencil at school. With great difficulty he cut the fruit in two, to find within only a soft, bitter pulp. Then he tried another and another. All were like the first one, and he gave up trying because he was at length convinced that none of the fruit was fit to eat.
Tired and unhappy, with bowed head and dangling arms, he pushed on slowly, stumbling over rocks, and becoming entangled again and again in the briers. He thought sadly of the disappointments he had met with in Africa.
“It is settled. I am to die of hunger. Where are the delicious fruits and the precious stones? Should I not do better to go home and leave the gold and silver to those who want them?”
As he went along, thinking over these things, he noticed ahead of him a bird about the size of a canary, which looked at him as if it longed to console him in his misery.
It went on before Pinocchio, flying from one branch to another, stopping when the marionette stopped, and moving every time the marionette moved. Pinocchio said to himself: “Does this dear little bird wish to be eaten? I’ll pluck its feathers, stick a twig through it, put it in the sun, and in half an hour it will be cooked and ready to eat.”
While the hungry marionette was giving himself up to this thought, the bird began to sing,
“Pinocchio, my dear,
If you would honey eat,
Come closer to me here,
And you will find a treat.”
Imagine Pinocchio’s surprise! He approached the little songster and looked up. Sure enough, there on a branch of a great tree was a beehive.
One would think that Pinocchio would at least stop to thank the bird, but not he! Up the tree he went like a squirrel, while the bees buzzed about him angrily. The marionette laughed.
“Sting away! sting away, brave bees! I am a marionette and made of wood. You may sting me as much as you please.” He thrust his hand into the hive and drew out a handful of sweet honey.
“This time at least I shall not die of hunger.”
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