"Yay!" shouted Sam Williams. "I'll be the fortygraph man!"
"No," said Penrod; "you be the one with the gun that guards the fortygraph man, because I'm the fortygraph man already. You can fix up a mighty good gun with this carpenter shop, Sam. We'11 make spears for our good ole beaters, too, and I'm goin' to make me a camera out o' that little starch-box and a bakin'-powder can that's goin' to be a mighty good ole camera. We can do lots more things--"
"Yay!" Sam cried. "Let's get started!" He paused. "Wait a minute, Penrod. Verman says he won't--"
"Well, he's got to!" said Penrod.
"I momp!" Verman insisted, almost distinctly.
They began to argue with him; but, for a time, Verman remained firm. They upheld the value of dramatic consistency, declaring that a beater dressed as completely as he was "wouldn't look like anything at all". He would "spoil the whole biznuss", they said, and they praised Herman for the faithful accuracy of his costume.
They also insisted that the garment in question was much too large for Verman, anyway, having been so recently worn by Herman and turned over to Verman with insufficient alteration, and they expressed surprise that "anybody with any sense" should make such a point of clinging to a misfit.
Herman sided against his brother in this controversy, perhaps because a certain loneliness, of which he was censcious, might be assuaged by the company of another trouserless person--or it may be that his motive was more sombre. Possibly he remembered that Verman's trousers were his own former property and might fit him in case the promise for five o'clock turned out badly. At all events, Verman finally yielded under great pressure, and consented to appear in the proper costume of the multitude of beaters it now became his duty to personify.