Both boys lived breathlessly through a magnificent moment.
"Leave me have it!" gasped Penrod. "Leave me have hold of it!"
"You wait a minute!" Sam protested, in a whisper. "I want to show you how I do."
"No; you let me show you how _I_ do!" Penrod insisted; and they scuffled for possession.
"Look out!" Sam whispered warningly. "It might go off."
"Then you better leave me have it!" And Penrod, victorious and flushed, stepped back, the weapon in his grasp. "Here," he said, "this is the way I do: You be a crook; and suppose you got a dagger, and I--"
"I don't want any dagger," Sam protested, advancing. "I want that revolaver. It's my father's revolaver, ain't it?"
"Well, WAIT a minute, can't you? I got a right to show you the way I DO, first, haven't I?" Penrod began an improvisation on the spot. "Say I'm comin' along after dark like this--look, Sam! And say you try to make a jump at me--"
"I won't!" Sam declined this role impatiently. "I guess it ain't YOUR father's revolaver, is it?"
"Well, it may be your father's but it ain't yours," Penrod argued, becoming logical. "It ain't either'r of us revolaver, so I got as much right--"
"You haven't either. It's my fath--"
"WATCH, can't you--just a minute!" Penrod urged vehemently. "I'm not goin' to keep it, am I? You can have it when I get through, can't you? Here's how _I_ do: I'm comin' along after dark, just walkin' along this way--like this--look, Sam!"
Penrod. suiting the action to the word, walked to the other end of the room, swinging the revolver at his side with affected carelessness.
"I'm just walkin' along like this, and first I don't see you," continued the actor. "Then I kind o? get a notion sumpthing wrong's liable to happen, so I -- No!" He interrupted himself abruptly. "No; that isn't it. You wouldn't notice that I had my good ole revolaver with me. You wouldn't think I had one, because it'd be under my coat like this, and you wouldn't see it." Penrod stuck the muzzle of the pistol into the waistband of his knickerbockers at the left side and, buttoning his jacket, sustained the weapon in concealment by pressure of his elbow. "So you think I haven't got any; you think I'm just a man comin' along, and so you--"