And to think that the teacher and also my mamma warned me, ‘Beware of bad companions!’ But I am headstrong. I am a bad, obstinate boy. I let them tell me what to do and then I do what I please. Why was I ever made? I have never had a quiet day in my life. Oh, dear! What will become of me? What will become of me?”
And Pinocchio continued to cry and weep and punch his head and call poor Eugene by name. Suddenly he heard the sound of footsteps. He turned and there were two policemen. “What are you doing there?” they asked.
“I am helping my schoolmate.”
“Is he hurt?”
“It appears so.”
“Worse than that,” said one of them, bending down and looking at Eugene closely; “the boy is wounded in the temple. Who did it?”
“It was not I,” said the marionette, who had hardly any breath left in his body.
“If you did not do it, who was it then?”
“Not I,” repeated Pinocchio.
“With what was he struck?”
“With this book.” And the marionette took from the ground the treatise on arithmetic, bound in thick cardboard, and handed it to the policeman.
“Whose book is this?”
