aware that for thirty years my mother--or her representative--has
carried the silver upstairs every night because as a family we did not
believe in insuring it? Burglary insurance, life insurance, fire
insurance--father has never paid a dollar for any one of them. And do
you happen to recall the line of my distinguished parent's jaw? If I
were you, Charlie, I would try to insure somebody else's trolley
system."

Wilkinson shook his head sadly.

"No, that won't do, Isabel. John M. is the only relative I have who
owns a trolley system, or much of anything else. Most of the other
systems are insured already, anyway, and the people who own them
undoubtedly insure them through their own connections--I was about to
say poor relations. No, my only hope is here, and it grieves me
deeply, Isabel, to see you take so pessimistic a view. Nevertheless, I
am not downcast; I will arise buoyantly to ask whether you cannot do
better?--whether you cannot devise some expedient whereby the heart of
your worthy father may be melted and become as other men's hearts. I
don't demand a permanent or even a protracted melting--all I ask is a
temporary thaw, just long enough to let me extract a promise from him
to let me insure those car barns and power houses. Then he can revert
to adamant and be--and welcome, so far as I am concerned. Now, Miss
Maitland, have you nothing to suggest?"

"Wouldn't it be more satisfactory to succeed by your own ideas and
devices?" Helen inquired.

"All very pretty, my plausible girl, but what if one has no ideas or
devices? That is very nearly my case, and it is a hard one. I've only
one real shot in my locker, and if that doesn't reach its mark, I'm
lost."

"And what is that?" Helen and Isabel asked almost simultaneously.

"In my single way I will endeavor to answer both these interrogations
at once. It is, then, the suggestion of a man I met in the office of
Silas Osgood and Company, a man by the wild, barbaric, outre name of
Smith. Richard Smith, I believe. And his suggestion--I tell it to you
in confidence, relying on your honor not to steal my stolen
thunder--was, very briefly, to put before my distinguished relation the
sad, disheartening effect it would have on the popularity of the
trolley stock in the banks and on the stock exchange if it became
generally noised abroad that the road carried no insurance and
maintained no proper insurance fund. What do you think of that?"

"I begin