se?"

Penrod, turning to the door, suspected jocularity, but he found himself
without recourse; he was nonplussed.

"Sure you won't let me have that horn tied up in nice wrapping-paper in
case you decide to take it?"

Penrod was almost positive that the spirit of this question was
satirical; but he was unable to reply, except by a feeble shake of the
head--though ten minutes later, as he plodded forlornly his homeward
way, he looked over his shoulder and sent backward a few words of morose
repartee:

"Oh, I am, am I?" he muttered, evidently concluding a conversation
which he had continued mentally with the salesman. "Well, you're double
anything you call me, so that makes you a smart Aleck twice! Ole double
smart Aleck!"

After that, he walked with the least bit more briskness, but not much.
No wonder he felt discouraged: there are times when eighty-five dollars
can be a blow to anybody! Penrod was so stunned that he actually
forgot what was in his pocket. He passed two drug stores, and they had
absolutely no meaning to him. He walked all the way without spending a
cent.

At home he spent a moment in the kitchen pantry while the cook was
in the cellar; then he went out to the stable and began some really
pathetic experiments. His materials were the small tin funnel which he
had obtained in the pantry, and a short section of old garden hose. He
inserted the funnel into one end of the garden hose, and made it fast by
wrappings of cord. Then he arranged the hose in a double, circular coil,
tied it so that it would remain coiled, and blew into the other end.

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, behin