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.
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