Page:Daskam--The imp and the angel.djvu/73



HE Imp retired, like Achilles, to his tent—it was striped red and blue and sulked. He dug his heels viciously into the sand, and rattled his iron shovel hideously against his pail; he had no direct intention of driving the young lady on the red afghan into nervous prostration, or making a headache for the gentleman in the blue glasses, but a vague realization that he was incidentally accomplishing both these results soothed him not a little.

When the gentleman pushed aside the tent flap and irritably inquired if that infernal noise was necessary to his happiness, the Imp pounded harder and answered grumpily that it was. He was only seven.

The sun beat hotter and hotter against his tent, the sand burned under him, the tide was still coming in, and the long tumbling waves were creeping farther and farther up the great beach,