Sam advanced. "Well, you've had your turn," he said. "Now, it's mine. I'm goin' to show you how I-- "
"WATCH me, can't you?" Penrod wailed. "I haven't showed you how _I_ do, have I? My goodness! Can't you watch me a minute?"
"I HAVE been! You said yourself it'd be my turn soon as you--"
"My goodness! Let me have a CHANCE, can't you?" Penrod retreated to the wall, turning his right side toward Sam and keeping the revolver still protected under his coat. "I got to have my turn first, haven't I?"
"Well, yours is over long ago."
"It isn't either! I--"
"Anyway," said Sam decidedly, clutching him by the right shoulder and endeavouring to reach his left side--"anyway, I'm goin' to have it now."
"You said I could have my turn out!" Penrod, carried away by indignation, raised his voice.
"I did not!" Sam, likewise lost to caution, asserted his denial loudly.
"You did, too."
"You said--"
"I never said anything!"
"You said--Quit that!"
"Boys!" Mrs. Williams, Sam's mother, opened the door of the room and stood upon the threshold. The scuffling of Sam and Penrod ceased instantly, and they stood hushed and stricken, while fear fell upon them. "Boys, you weren't quarrelling, were you?"
"Ma'am?" said Sam.
"Were you quarrelling with Penrod?"
"No, ma'am," answered Sam in a small voice.
"It sounded like it. What was the matter?"
Both boys returned her curious glance with meekness. They were summoning their faculties--which were needed. Indeed, these are the crises which prepare a boy for the business difficulties of his later life. Penrod, with the huge weapon beneath his jacket, insecurely supported by an elbow and by a waistband which he instantly began to distrust, experienced distressful sensations similar to those of the owner of too heavily insured property carrying a gasoline can under his overcoat and detained for conversation by a policeman. And if, in the coming years it was to be Penrod's lot to find himself in that precise situation, no doubt he would be the better prepared for it on account of this present afternoon's experience under the scalding eye of Mrs.