d 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