Sam was shaken, but he had set out to demonstrate those rights of his and did not mean to yield them.
"Yes; you'll have a NICE time," he said, "next time your uncle goes to play on that horn and can't find it. No, sir; I got a perfect ri--"
"My uncle don't PLAY on it!" Roddy shrieked. "It's an ole wore- out horn nobody wants, and it's mine, I tell you! I can blow on it, or bust it, or kick it out in the alley and leave it there, if I want to!"
"No, you can't!"
"I can, too!"
"No, you can't. You can't PROVE you can, and unless you prove it, I got a perf--"
Roddy stamped his foot. "I can, too!" he shrieked. "You ole durn jackass, I can, too! I can, can, can, can--"
Penrod suddenly stopped his intermittent production of blats, and intervened. "_I_ know how you can prove it, Roddy," he said briskly. "There's one way anybody can always prove sumpthing belongs to them, so that nobody'd have a right to call them what they wanted to. You can prove it's yours, EASY!"
"How?"
"Well," said Penrod, "if you give it away."
"What you mean?" asked Roddy, frowning.
"Well, look here," Penrod began brightly. "You can't give anything away that doesn't belong to you, can you?"
"No."
"So, then," the resourceful boy continued, "f'r instance, if you give this ole horn to me, that'd prove it was yours, and Sam'd haf to say it was, and he wouldn't have any right to--"
"I won't do it!" said Roddy sourly. "I don't want to give you that horn. What I want to give you anything at all for?"