"No, no; I'm afraid not. Thirty thousand or so of them down there, I suppose! All thinking they're very important. All being born, or dying, or love-making, or starving, or filling their bellies, and so on. Quite a small place!"
Winnie smiled. "Yes, I dare say. It sounds true, but rather trite. I have problems of my own, Mr. Wigram."
"So have I—income, and taxation, and necessary expenditure. Still, these thirty thousand are interesting."
"They're awfully lucky to want very few clothes and hardly any fires, and to live in such a beautiful place. What do you mean by things in the large, Mr. Wigram?"
"Well, I mean truth," said the absurd little man, clutching the balcony railings, just as if he were going to vault over them and crack his skull on the nut-shaped stones which served for a path thirty or forty feet beneath. "Truth is things in the large, you know."
"I don't think I know that, but I know a friend in England who talks rather like you."
"Poor devil! How much money does he make?"
"He's got independent means, Mr. Wigram."
"Then he can afford to talk a great deal better."
"You really make me rather uncomfortable. Surely everybody can say what they like nowadays?"