Lasta

She was golden, from the hair wound and braided so smoothly about her head, to the gold kid slippers on her small and fragile feet. Her dress, of some soft, glistening, silky stuff, was a deeper shade of the same gold, her soft, delicate skin seemed almost to be touched with a faint, powdery, golden dust. He failed to register, and never could recall, the color of her eyes. Perhaps, they were golden, too.

This completed, the agent hurries on, each day a constant round of contracts. A single item may bring its difficulties: suppose, in the year that has passed since his last visit, the usual show grounds has been cut up into building lots! He must find another, fully five hundred feet square, fairly level, rentable at a reasonable price, not too far from the center of town and easily reached by main trunk car lines. It isn't easy. But he does it.

Ben Holt was a poor boy, and at the time when he first gained his good name, he had never seen such a thing as a green field in the country. As to buttercups and daisies, they would have been looked upon quite as "treasures of silver and gold" by the little boy who had lived all his life in a London alley. This alley was so narrow, that the utmost he could see even of the blue sky of heaven was a small strip between the two rows of tall, dirty houses, which were so close together that a person living at one side of the alley could almost shake hands with his opposite neighbour from their respective windows.