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