Emma really was so little the last time he saw her that Pinocchio can hardly get past it. It's a good thing that she's grown, though. She's twenty-eight now, and that means that it's time. It's time for her to believe and to break the curse – and just in time too, considering the way Pinocchio himself was starting to turn back into wood.
However, he was coming to realize how skeptical Emma was, how much the world had hurt her, how much harder that made his job – and he became all the sorrier that he hadn't been there for her.