He blew and blew and blew; he set his lips tight together, as he had observed the little musician with the big horn set his, and blew and sputtered, and sputtered and blew, but nothing of the slightest importance happened in the orifice of the funnel. Still he blew. He began to be dizzy; his eyes watered; his expression became as horrible as a strangled person's. He but blew the more.
He stamped his feet and blew. He staggered to the wheelbarrow, sat, and blew--and yet the funnel uttered nothing; it seemed merely to breathe hard.
It would not sound like a horn, and, when Penrod finally gave up, he had to admit piteously that it did not look like a horn. No boy over nine could have pretended that it was a horn.
He tossed the thing upon the floor, and leaned back in the wheelbarrow, inert.
"Yay, Penrod!"
Sam Williams appeared in the doorway, and, behind Sam, Master Roderick Magsworth Bitts, Junior.
"Yay, there!"
Penrod made no response.
The two came in, and Sam picked up the poor contrivance Penrod had tossed upon the floor.
"What's this ole dingus?" Sam asked.
"Nothin'."
"Well, what's it for?"
"Nothin'," said Penrod. "It's a kind of a horn."
"What kind?"
"For music," said Penrod simply.
Master Bitts laughed loud and long; he was derisive. "Music!" he yipped. "I thought you meant a cow's horn! He says it's a music-horn, Sam? What you think o' that?"
Sam blew into the thing industriously.
"It won't work," he announced.
"Course it won't!" Roddy Bitts shouted. "You can't make it go without you got a REAL horn. I'm goin' to get me a real horn some day before long, and then you'll see me goin' up and down here playin' it like sixty! I'll--"
"'Some day before long!'" Sam mocked. "Yes, we will! Why'n't you get it to-day, if you're goin' to?"
"I would," said Roddy. "I'd go get the money from my father right now, only he wouldn't give it to me."
Sam whooped, and Penrod, in spite of his great depression, uttered a few jibing sounds.
"I'd get MY father to buy me a fire-engine and team o' HORSES,"
Sam bellowed, "only he wouldn't!"
"Listen, can't you?" cried Roddy. "I mean he would most any time, but not this month. I can't have any money for a month beginning last Saturday, because I got paint on one of our dogs, and he came in the house with it on him, and got some on pretty near everything. If it hadn't 'a' been for that--"
"Oh, yes!" said Sam. "If it hadn't 'a' been for that! It's always SUMPTHING!"
"It is not!"
"Well, then, why'n't you go GET a real horn?"
Roddy's face had flushed with irritation.
"Well, didn't I just TELL you--" he began, but paused, while the renewal of some interesting recollection became visible in his expression. "Why, I COULD, if I wanted to," he said more calmly.
"It wouldn't be a new one, maybe. I guess it would be kind of an old one, but--"
"Oh, a toy horn!" said Sam. "I expect one you had when you were three years old, and your mother stuck it up in the attic to keep till you're dead, or sumpthing! "
"It's not either any toy horn," Roddy insisted. "It's a reg'lar horn for a band, and I could have it as easy as anything."
The tone of this declaration was so sincere that it roused the lethargic Penrod.
"Roddy, is that true?" he sat up to inquire piercingly.
"Of course it is!" Master Bitts returned. "What you take me for?
I could go get that horn this minute if I wanted to."
"A real one--honest?"
"Well, didn't I say it was a real one?"
"Like in the BAND?"
"I said so, didn't I?"
"I guess you mean one of those little ones," said Penrod.
"No, sir!" Roddy insisted stoutly; "it's a big one! It winds around in a big circle that would go all the way around a pretty fat man."
"What store is it in?"
"It's not in any store," said Roddy. "It's at my Uncle Ethelbert's. He's got this horn and three or four pianos and a couple o' harps and--"
"Does he keep a music store?"
"No. These harps and pianos and all such are old ones--awful old."
"Oh," said Sam, "he runs a second-hand store!"
"He does not!" Master Bitts returned angrily. "He doesn't do anything. He's just got 'em. He's got forty-one guitars."
"Yay!" Sam whooped, and jumped up and down. "Listen to Roddy Bitts makin' up lies!"
"You look out, Sam Williams!" said Roddy threateningly. "You look out how you call me names!"
"What name'd I call you?"
"You just the same as said I told lies. That's just as good as callin' me a liar, isn't it?"
"No," said Sam; "but I got a right to, if I want to. Haven't I, Penrod?"
"How?" Roddy demanded hotly. "How you got a right to?"
"Because you can't prove what you said."
"Well," said Roddy, "you'd be just as much of one if you can't prove what I said WASN'T true."
"No, sir! You either got to prove it or be a liar. Isn't that so, Penrod.
"Yes, sir," Penrod ruled, with a little importance. "that's the way it is, Roddy."
"Well, then," said Roddy, "come on over to my Uncle Ethelbert's, and I'll show you!"
"No," said Sam. "I wouldn't walk over there just to find out sumpthing I already know isn't so. Outside of a music store there isn't anybody in the world got forty-one guitars! I've heard lots o' people TALK, but I never heard such a big l--"
"You shut up!" shouted Roddy. "You ole--"
Penrod interposed.
"Why'n't you show us the horn, Roddy?" he asked. "You said you could get it. You show us the horn and we'll believe you. If you show us the horn, Sam'll haf to take what he said back; won't you, Sam?"
"Yes," said Sam, and added. "He hasn't got any. He went and told a--"
Roddy's eyes were bright with rage; he breathed noisily.
"I haven't?" he cried. "You just wait here, and I'll show you!"
And he ran furiously from the stable.
