"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.
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