Mary started.
“Why, John!” She betrayed a look of dismay, glanced at their visitor, tried to say “Have you?” approvingly, and blushed.
The Doctor made no kind of response.
“Now, don’t conclude,” said John to Mary, coloring too, but smiling. He turned to the physician. “It’s a wonderful spot, Doctor.”
But the Doctor was still silent, and Richling turned.
“Just to think, Mary, of a place where you can raise all the products of two zones; where health is almost perfect; where the yellow fever has never been; and where there is such beauty as can be only in the tropics and a tropical sea. Why, Doctor, I can’t understand why Europeans or Americans haven’t settled it long ago.”
“I suppose we can find out before we go, can’t we?” said Mary, looking timorously back and forth between John and the Doctor.
“The reason is,” replied John, “it’s so little known. Just one island away out by itself. Three crops of fruit a year. One acre planted in bananas feeds fifty men. All the capital a man need have is an axe to cut down the finest cabinet and dye-woods in the world. The thermometer never goes above ninety nor below forty. You can hire all the labor you want at a few cents a day.”
Mary’s diligent eye detected a cloud on the Doctor’s face. But John, though nettled, pushed on the more rapidly.
“A man can make—easily!—a thousand dollars the first year, and live on two hundred and fifty. It’s the place for a poor man.”