'
'Where is the treasury?'
It was a blunt question, and for a moment she looked startled and a
little suspicious, but I said:
'Oh, come, don't you be afraid about me. At home we have seventy
millions of people, and although I say it myself that shouldn't, there is
not one person among them all but would trust me with untold fish-hooks.'
This reassured her, and she told me where the hooks were hidden in the
house. Then she wandered from her course to brag a little about the size
of the sheets of transparent ice that formed the windows of the mansion,
and asked me if I had ever seen their like at home, and I came right out
frankly and confessed that I hadn't, which pleased her more than she
could find words to dress her gratification in. It was so easy to please
her, and such a pleasure to do it, that I went on and said--
'Ah, Lasca, you are a fortune girl!--this beautiful house, this dainty
jewel, that rich treasure, all this elegant snow, and sumptuous icebergs
and limitless sterility, and public bears and walruses, and noble freedom
and largeness and everybody's admiring eyes upon you, and everybody's
homage and respect at your command without the asking; young, rich,
beautiful, sought, courted, envied, not a requirement unsatisfied, not a
desire ungratified, nothing to wish for that you cannot have--it is
immeasurable good-fortune! I have seen myriads of girls, but none of whom
these extraordinary things could be truthfully said but you alone.
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