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186 wished for them before he had them on him. And now he was as grand and bright as a new-struck penny. So he thought it would be fine fun to play his father a trick.

"He was not so very nice all the time I was at home;" and so he wished he was standing before his father's door, just as ragged as he was of old, and in a second he stood at the door.



"Good day, father, and thank you for our last meal," said the lad.

But when the father saw that he had come back still more ragged and tattered than when he set out, he began to bellow and to bemoan himself.

"There's no helping you," he said. "You have not so much as earned clothes to your back all the time you have been away."