Page:Daskam--The imp and the angel.djvu/183

The Prodigal Imp then he crushed his polo-cap on his curly head and left the room. With money in one's pocket, one feels less mournful.

At the top of the stairs he stopped and considered. It might be well to have some clean clothes, and at least a night-gown and a tooth-brush. His Uncle Stanley said that with a night-gown and a tooth-brush a man could start for China at any minute, and his Uncle Stanley was a very clever young man indeed. The Imp intended to go no farther than New York; still, the rule might hold.

But stop! Had any prince that he had ever heard of carried a night-gown when he left his father's palace where the older brothers laughed at him and the servants sneered, but he came back wealthy at last, and honorable, with the princess at his side, and they banished the brothers and ruled the country? No book that had been read to him ever so much as hinted at a night-gown, or a tooth-brush, for that matter. So with a sigh not wholly sorrowful, he abandoned the idea and turned again to go.

But his mother's reproachful eyes seemed to open wide before him, and he seemed to see 155