I congratulate you
on having got just what was your whim. You are over a hundred miles
from the nearest land--Rhodes, you see." (He laid a map before me.)
"You are off the steamship tracks; the Austrian Lloyds to Alexandria
leave you far to the northeast. You are equally remote from any
submarine cable; here on the southwest, from Alexandria to Candia, is
the nearest. You will have to fetch your letters--"
"I shouldn't think of doing such a thing," said I, indignantly.
"Then you'll only get them once in three months. Neopalia is extremely
rugged and picturesque. It is nine miles long and five broad; it
grows cotton, wine, oil, and a little corn. The people are quite
unsophisticated, but very good-hearted--"
"And," said I, "there are only three hundred and seventy of them, all
told. I really think I shall do very well there."
"I have no doubt you will. By the way, treat the old gentleman kindly.
He is terribly cut up at having to sell. 'My dear island,' he writes,
'is second to my dead son's honor, and to nothing else.' His son, you
know, Lord Wheatley, was a bad lot, a very bad lot indeed."
"He left a lot of unpaid debts, didn't he?"
"Yes, gambling debts. He spent his time knocking about Paris
and London with his cousin Constantine, by no means an improving
companion, if report speaks truly.
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