It was one minute before eleven when the card of Mr. Charles Wilkinson was borne gingerly, by a large youth from South Framingham who served as door boy, into the presence of Mr. Hurd. That gentleman, reading the bit of pasteboard with a grunt which might have been indicative of any one of a dozen invidious sentiments, opened the proximate corner of his mouth.

“Send him in,” came from the brief orifice.

A moment later Mr. Wilkinson stood in the presence of his prey. Or perchance but no, this was to be Marengo, not Waterloo and above all, not Moscow. Something of this was in his eyes when he lifted them to meet those of his distinguished relation.

“Are you at liberty for a few moments?” he soberly inquired. He took care to delete every vestige of animation from his tone and manner, and so radical a change did this effect that his step-uncle blinked. A man as keen as John M. Hurd could not be blind to a mutation so great. He looked Mr. Wilkinson over with more care than he had ever employed before, for he recognized at once that this was no ordinary visit.

“I am as much at liberty as I am likely to be,” he replied noncommittally.

His visitor wistfully and somewhat suggestively eyed a chair, but made no move to be seated. He felt that, no matter how the interview was to close, punctiliousness should begin it.

“Be seated,” said Mr. Hurd, briefly.

“I have come to see you, sir,” his young relative began, feeling his way cautiously, “with reference to a matter that I have never mentioned to you, although I have been studying it for some time. Perhaps you may be of the opinion that if it were of paramount importance I could have presented it to you without a long preliminary investigation. But each of us has to work in his own way, and this affair was of a sort in which I had little or no previous experience. The result was that it has taken me a considerable time to formulate my idea, and I want you to give it a fair opportunity to sink in, so to speak, before you reach any decision.”

With his curiosity somewhat stirred, his hearer grunted a qualified assent.

“I have, of course, fortified myself by the possession of facts, actual facts, sir, and without them I should not have trespassed on your time, for I must tell you at once that my proposition concerns itself with the fire insurance of the Massachusetts Light, Heat, and Traction Company.”

The knowledge that this was probably the most perilous point in his passage would have caused Wilkinson to hurry past with all possible speed, but his uncle interrupted him with a grim laugh.

“That need give you no concern, my young friend,” he said curtly, “for the company does not carry any insurance.”

A trace of Mr. Wilkinson’s normal impudence returned momentarily to his tone when he replied:

“My dear sir, didn’t I say that I had made a long preliminary investigation of this? You can scarcely hold my intelligence at so low a figure as to think that I didn’t know that fact. That’s why I’m here because I do know it.”

It may have been the effect of the return to the normal in his step-nephew’s tone, or it may have been merely Mr. Hurd’s business method, which expelled his next remark from sardonic lips.

“Then you need but one more fact to make your knowledge of the subject complete, and that I will now give you. Not only does my company carry no insurance, but it never intends or expects to. Is there anything else this morning?”

Charlie smiled calmly, unmoved.

“Now we are ready to begin, sir. You have disbelieved in insurance so strongly and so long that such a remark was exactly what I expected you to make. In fact, I should have been not only surprised, but positively embarrassed, had you not made it. Now, I repeat, we are ready to talk business. And I have your promise to listen to my plan.”

It did not occur to the magnate that he had made no such promise, until Wilkinson was well launched; after that, he forgot about it.

“Did any one ever call to your attention, sir, the fact that the statistics show that the fire losses on traction schedules in the Eastern states exceed the insurance premiums on those schedules by nearly thirty-five per cent?”

Mr. Hurd shook his head shortly.

“I did not know it.”

Wilkinson did not know it either, but it could not be disproved, and served excellently as a gambit.

“And I am not interested in other traction companies’ fires,” added his uncle.

“No, of course not. But the law of average works in the end. Your properties are subject to exactly the same conditions and hazards as others, and in the end the Massachusetts Light, Heat, and Traction Company will incur more in losses than it would ever have to pay in premiums. In the long run the average wins. So far you have been surprisingly fortunate, and that is another reason why you should begin now to insure. The law of average is perfectly inexorable, and every year of low losses brings you nearer the big losses that are bound to come. You’ve been gambling, and now is the time to play safe.”

“Perhaps, my boy,” Mr. Hurd replied with amusement, “you believe these things that you quote so glibly. Perhaps not. Let us assume that you do. Therefore let me ask you this: if the insurance companies pay more losses than they get in premiums on traction schedules, why don’t they cut off this loss by ceasing to insure them? Hey?”

“Oh, lots of them do,” Wilkinson returned easily. “A few of the others may have had a streak of luck for a few years, just as you have had, but the rest take it all in the day’s work, think that the rates may go up on account of the bad record of the class and then it would be an advantage to have the business on their books, or else they try to make it up on other better paying classes. And besides, they have the use of the money which is paid in premiums during good years when losses are light.” Not for nothing had he listened to the painstaking explanations of Cole, and whatever his eccentricities, Charlie had a native shrewdness hardly second to that of old John M. himself. Perhaps the older man was thinking of this when he next spoke.

“Then it has probably occurred to you that the Massachusetts Light, Heat, and Traction Company can do the same thing and does. I use the interest and profits of my insurance fund which I have accumulated by not paying premiums, to pay losses. How about that?”

“That would be all right if your properties were widely enough distributed. But they’re not. Some day you’ll get a big loss, which will wipe out your interest, profits, and fund all together for twenty years. Your fund’s all right for cars that burn on the road or for small fires; but what if something big went? And the insurance money would come in very nicely when you most needed it. You’d have trouble enough on your hands without having to go out and raise money, too, if your new Pemberton Street barn should burn up with half a million dollars’ worth of cars in it which it is quite possible it may do at almost any time.”

“What! The new barn?” said the magnate, incredulously. “Why, my boy, that barn is the latest thing in fireproof construction! There isn’t a stick of wood in that building from cellar to attic.”

“And the cars, are they fireproof, too?”

John M. Hurd looked up sharply.

“No,” he said slowly. “No, I don’t suppose they are. . . . Still, there’s nothing to set the cars afire. They’re safe enough in that building. Nothing can happen to them there.”

“The building itself is not located on a desert island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean,” said his nephew, thoughtfully. “It might be exposed to a serious fire in some of the neighboring buildings that big paper-box factory, for example, across the alley to the south. There might, in fact,” he paused “there might be a general fire in that part of Boston.”

“A conflagration, you mean? Nonsense! Boston is safe as a church.”

“Probably safer than St. Stephen’s, out in Cambridge, that burned to the ground last week,” returned his visitor, with a smile.

“To be sure,” said Mr. Hurd, hastily. “But there’ll never be a big, sweeping fire in Boston.”

“Why not? There was one once.”

“Forty years ago. That’s no criterion. Things are very different now. This is a modern city we’re talking about half the buildings down town are fireproof or nearly so. Modern cities don’t burn the way older ones did.”

“Baltimore did, as you may recall; also San Francisco. And they were modern as modern as Boston. There are people not Bostonians, of course who would consider them more so.”

“Come now, do you mean to tell me any one honestly believes there is any danger of another really big fire here?” rejoined Mr. Hurd, almost contemptuously; but under the surface Charlie believed that his attitude of contempt was more or less assumed. He believed he had made a distinct impression, and it was therefore almost with a gambler’s instinct that he brought forth his trump card.

“I tell you, sir,” he said, with all the impressiveness he could command, “that the best technical engineers not alarmists, but men who are careful students of such things agree that the danger here is as great as in any of the big cities of the United States. The conflagration hazard in the congested district of Boston is not a thing one can exactly calculate, but it would be difficult to overestimate its gravity.”

Mr. Hurd regarded him with amazement.

“Would you mind repeating that?” he asked at length.

“Certainly not, since I know it to be true. I say that the conflagration hazard in the congested district of Boston is not a thing one can exactly calculate, but it would be difficult to overestimate its gravity.”

The traction magnate walked slowly to the window, and looked out. On the sunny pavements below him people were going back and forth on their various concerns. Around the corner came the familiar delivery wagon of a well-known dealer in wholesale groceries. Somehow the sight of these common things restored to Mr. Hurd his ordinary tranquillity of mind, which he now saw had been disturbed by the astonishing utterances of his plausible young relation. He smiled rather grimly when he thought of how near he had come to being impressed by what Charlie had said. Of course, there could be nothing in it; certainly not, from such a source. It was the old John M. Hurd who turned again to face his visitor, who with but one card left to play awaited breathlessly but with outward nonchalance the effect of his cherished speech.

“Well, I’ve enjoyed talking this over with you, Charlie,” the older man said with candor. “There’s something in what you say, too. Perhaps our insurance fund isn’t as large as it ought to be. But I couldn’t consider carrying insurance for the Massachusetts Light, Heat, and Traction Company. And why are you so interested in this, all of a sudden, anyway?”

“Partly philanthropic and partly mercenary,” said his nephew, easily. “Philanthropic, because I would like to do something of real benefit to the most distinguished member of my family who least needs my assistance; mercenary, because I need the money. I rather expect you to let me have charge of the placing of this insurance, sir.”

“Well, Charlie, I don’t mind saying that you’ve made a better impression than any of these other insurance men that occasionally get into my office, and if I were going to take out insurance on the traction properties, I believe I’d let you make your commission on it. But I’m not. And now I must ask you to excuse me.”

“Oh, I’ve not quite finished,” returned Wilkinson. As he was in for it now, he would see it through. “I think you’re making a mistake, sir; and there are still one or two aspects of the matter which you have not considered.”

“And what may they be?” inquired his uncle. “Please remember I’m a busy man.”

His visitor reflected briefly. He did not know whether to play his last card slowly and carefully or to slam it face upward with enough force to make the table rattle. He decided on the latter method; after all, to succeed with John M. Hurd one did well to make him blink.

“There is such an institution as the Stock Exchange,” he said blandly.

Mr. Hurd looked at him.

“Massachusetts Traction has been considered a very substantial security,” Wilkinson went on, “so safe that its market value fluctuates very little, and so well regarded that the banks generally accept its stock as collateral at very nearly its market value. They accept it as a matter of course because they know its dividends are fully earned and paid regularly, and they have confidence in your management and don’t go into the details. Your company has no bonded indebtedness; the bonds were all converted into stock years ago; if it was bonded, the bondholders would compel you to insure, whether you wished to or not. Perhaps the banks have forgotten that you are not forced to carry insurance, and are taking it for granted that you are exercising ordinary prudence along this line and insuring just the same. Suppose only suppose the intelligence should become diffused among certain gentlemen of State Street that you are likely to lose three quarters of a million dollars by fire if your new Pemberton Street car barn should go and the power house adjoining it be seriously damaged, and to meet such a loss you had an insurance fund of thirty thousand dollars. Do you suppose your stock would be quite so popular as collateral as it is now?”

He paused for a reply, but none came.

“Of course none of the directors of the company ever borrow money on that stock. . . . Need I say more, sir?”

It was evident that there was no need. If there were any of the directors who did not borrow money on the stock, Mr. Hurd could not think of them offhand. Once more he walked to the window, and this time he looked long and thoughtfully out over the level roofs.

“Your point is not badly taken. And in one thing you are probably right State Street, if left to itself, would never raise the question,” he said, half to himself. But Wilkinson’s reply was ready and obvious.

“There are so many thoughtless people,” he said softly. “One never can tell when such news might leak out.”

His uncle surveyed him sternly. But Charlie’s cryptic gaze met his uncle’s, undisturbed.

“Some one might tell,” he gently observed, and said no more.

It was some time before Mr. Hurd raised a thoughtful yet somewhat amused face to that of his caller.

“I’ll consider the matter,” he said tersely.

“I thank you, sir,” replied Charles, with graceful humility, which he dared assume since his case seemed won. And a moment later South Framingham’s one time pride watched his exit through the grille gate into the descending elevator.

As Wilkinson started blithely across the Common, he caught sight of a familiar figure advancing along one of the diagonal paths. He quickened his already jocund step to meet Miss Maitland at the intersection of their ways.

“Whither away so briskly this hungry noon?” he inquired with enthusiasm. “If it were not for the fact that I am in search of some one to ask me to luncheon, I would ask you to come and lunch with me.”

“Then if I were really quite hungry, which I am after an hour in this autumn air, I should decline your gallant invitation with regret, and say that I am on my way to lunch with Uncle Silas at the Club.”

Charlie was on the point of telling her his news but changed his intent. After all, his were incubator chickens at best, and perhaps it would be wiser to postpone a public enumeration of them. So he merely replied, “I trust you will have a pleasant luncheon.”

“The same to you, and many of them consecutively,” replied the girl, with a laugh.

“Now, that’s what I call a friendly speech,” rejoined her escort, and the two went their separate ways.

At the club whose billiard players have the almost unique privilege between masse shots of regarding at close range the tombstones of an aristocratic cemetery, Helen and her uncle were comfortably lingering over their demi-tasses before Mr. Osgood’s guest gave speech to the thoughts within her.

“You are a dear to give me this luncheon,” she began.

The old gentleman bowed a courtly head.

“I have been envied, I think, by all my more youthful fellow members here,” he said. “And that is very pleasant, even when one might be supposed to have passed the age of vanity.”

“Thank you, Uncle Silas. No one of your fellow members could have said a nicer thing than that.” She fingered her coffee cup. “But I had a reason for inviting myself practically to lunch with you. I want to ask your advice.”

“I’m afraid I should be inclined in advance to let you do exactly as you liked, my child,” said the other, with a smile. “But what is it? I hope it’s not trouble of any sort.”

“No it’s not trouble, exactly,” his niece responded. “It’s more like well, like dissatisfaction. I am awfully tired of being a perfectly useless person, with no definite end and aim. You don’t suppose it’s because I see every day the girls coming down to work, on the Massachusetts Avenue cars, do you? I went a little while ago to my doctor’s because I thought perhaps there was something the matter with me, and he suggested a change of air, but I think he mixed up the cause with the effect. Perhaps I do need a change, but it’s a change of interests and a change of what I see and hear and talk about.”

“Commonly termed a vacation,” said Mr. Osgood.

“Yes, a vacation that’s it. Not a vacation from doing anything, because I’ve done nothing, but a vacation from the atmosphere I’ve been living in.”

“You mean the artistic atmosphere?” her uncle asked. “You are a little tired of ”

“I’m more than a little I’m horribly tired of imitations and poses and make-believes. I want to see things and people who really live, who don’t exist by the light of crimson-shaded globes and spend their days dreaming about impressions and arrangements and tones and shadows.”

Helen wound up this diminutive tirade with quite a little flourish, and Mr. Osgood looked thoughtfully across the table at her.

“Why don’t you run down to New York?” he suggested. “I’m sure your Aunt Mary Wardrop would be delighted to have you come for a visit.”

“Yes. I thought of that. I should like to go there, and I had almost decided to. But can’t you suggest something for me to do? Aunt Mary’s principal occupation is abusing the nouveaux riches, and one merely has to agree with her, which is not at all difficult. If I had anything to do here, I’d rather stay than go. Of course New York is quite a change from Boston there can be no doubt about that. But don’t you see what I mean, Uncle Silas?”

“I think I do somewhat, my dear. You are a little restless, and you think that because the things you do are small they are less real. That is not so small things can be made very interesting if one does them with enthusiasm. Take my own business, for example. It is possibly just a ‘business’ to you, like any other, but that is because you have not seen it from the inside. To me it is absolutely vital. I don’t know of another business so interesting.”

“Really!” the girl answered. “I thought it was just getting people to buy insurance policies, very much as you would have gotten them to buy sugar if you had been in the grocery business. If it’s so interesting, why couldn’t I come down to your office and learn about it? I’m sure I could be of some use I’m quite quick at figures.”

“I fear you’d be disappointed,” said Mr. Osgood. “I’m afraid I must admit that adding up columns of figures is very much the same in one business as in another. And as I said, to find the real interest you should see a business from the inside. My office is not the inside it’s only part way in. The real inside, the center of the web, is the home office of some big company. I’m only a local agent, you understand; you would only see one phase of the business in my office. But if you went to New York, I could arrange that you might visit the home office of one of the New York companies, if you would like.”

“I think I would,” said Miss Maitland.

“Then I will give you a letter to Mr. James Wintermuth, one of my oldest and closest friends and the head of the Guardian Fire Insurance Company of New York. And some morning, if you find time hanging heavy on your hands, you can go down to William Street. And if you don’t arrive before ten o’clock, I think Mr. Wintermuth will be pleased to show you something real and something which has not a purple shadow in its possession.”

“Then you really think it would be a good thing for me to go to New York?” his niece asked.

“Decidedly. I’d write your aunt to-day, if I were you. Now that she has your portrait, she would probably like a chance to compare it with the original.”

“On the contrary, she may think, that having so recent a copy, the original would be superfluous.”

“I fancy I’d risk it,” her uncle returned, with a smile, as they rose from the table.

And so it was arranged. Helen’s mother entered her expected protest, and was promptly overruled. Trunks were packed and letters were written; among them one by Silas Osgood to James Wintermuth. And at length, as September was drawing to a close, Miss Maitland boarded the Knickerbocker Limited one day, and the town of her nativity was speedily left behind her.

On the very afternoon of her departure the office of the Massachusetts Light, Heat, and Traction Company was the scene of an unusual, and, to most of the participants, a disquieting conference. The shimmering face of the big, dark, mahogany table reflected many a perplexed expression, and its substantial supports found their impeccable varnish menaced by a number of restless and uneasy boots. The directors of the company, assembled for their monthly meeting, found that, instead of the customary conventionality of procedure, a thing strangely impertinent and unexpected demanded their surprised attention.

Ordinarily these meetings were simple in the extreme, being merely ratifications of what the President had done and approvals of what he said he purposed to do. To the somewhat bored group of representative financial figureheads around the table Mr. Hurd would read a sheet of figures telling how many million miles the company had carried one passenger during the previous month such reports are always reduced to absurdities and would inform them of such plans as he chose to intrust to their confidence, and would then suggest the declaration of the usual dividend. To this the directors would unanimously assent. Then they punctiliously received each man his golden eagle, and a motion to adjourn closed the ceremony.

To-day had come an astonishing innovation in procedure. Instead of suavely instructing them what they should vote to do, Mr. Hurd was behaving in a most oddly uncharacteristic fashion. He was asking their advice. This amounted to a bouleversement supreme of the usual order of things, and it was no wonder that there was disquietude among his hearers.

“It has been represented to me,” he had tersely said, “that if a large fire should involve our Pemberton Street barn and power house, notwithstanding the presumably fireproof construction of those buildings, we should quite likely incur a much larger loss than we would find it convenient to pay at a time when additional financing might be somewhat embarrassing. I am therefore laying before you gentlemen the question of doing what we have never previously done, and carrying fire insurance on our properties. I prefer not to advise you, and suggest an open discussion of the matter.”

Mr. Hurd sat down; his directors surveyed one another and the situation with concern. Could the old man be losing his grip, or was this merely a transient eccentricity? In the debate which followed the President took no part; only once, in answer to a question by Mr. Jonas Green, much the most penurious man at the table, as to what had brought the question up at the present time, Mr. Green being an enthusiastic exponent of the doctrine of laissez faire when any additional expenditure was proposed, Mr. Hurd made reply:

“It is represented to me that if it became public knowledge that we carry no insurance, banking and financial institutions generally may come to feel that our conservatism is open to criticism and that they are rating our stock somewhat too highly as collateral. It is intimated that some of us might conceivably be annoyed by requests to substitute in part other collateral or somewhat reduce loans secured by Massachusetts Traction stock.”

“But so far as the banks are concerned, we’re in exactly the same position we’ve always been. How is the fact we don’t insure going to become public knowledge now any more than in the past?” persisted Mr. Green.

“It is suggested that news spreads if not of its own volatility, at least with only the most trifling assistance. And that, I take it,” concluded Mr. Hurd, “will be supplied.”

Mr. Green’s face grew almost purple.

“Why!” he exclaimed, “that’s that’s pretty close to blackmail!”

The President’s lips half concealed the merest trace of a smile.

“Possibly,” he assented. “But I am inclined to think it is business.”

The controversy continued. And Mr. Hurd, listening, found himself more and more moved to austere amusement by the effect of Charlie’s suave proposal. When he had placed the matter before the directorate, it was because he himself had not made up his mind on the question of its desirability. He had slowly come to feel that his personal prejudice against carrying insurance should not be made forcibly to apply to the policy of a corporation, in which many others were interested, and he felt that he would prefer to shift the responsibility on this point to the gentlemen who presumably were paid for deciding just such things. And as he listened, he found growing upon him the hope that Charlie’s plan would be adopted. This hope, unexpressed, was so utterly out of keeping with what he had supposed to be his convictions that he strangled it without a qualm. It was, he supposed, dead, when he sat up at the further request of Mr. Jonas Green to answer a few additional queries.

“Tell me,” said Mr. Green, “do you honestly believe there’s a particle of danger of a big fire in this city? Pooh!” He dismissed the subject almost contemptuously.

Some odd chord of recollection stirred in Mr. Hurd. Almost unconsciously he responded:

“The best technical engineers not alarmists, but men who are careful students of such things agree that the conflagration hazard in the congested district of Boston is not a thing one can exactly calculate, but it would be difficult to overestimate its gravity.”

The sounding syllables passed from his lips with a faint, far echo which he found vaguely but unidentifiably familiar. But into the group around the long table the utterance fell with cryptic, crucial solemnity. Only Mr. Green, stubbornly contentious to the last, and thinking anxiously of both horns of the dilemma at once, found voice or will to reply.

“You don’t say so!” he said feebly.

“I do,” Mr. Hurd coolly rejoined. “And now, gentlemen, the motion is in order: Shall the Massachusetts Light, Heat, and Traction Company insure its properties against loss by fire?”

And when the motion was put, there was no dissenting voice.

Of this somewhat unprecedented meeting the close at least was normal. But Mr. Jonas Green grasped his ten dollar gold piece more firmly than ever as he passed through the doorway.