“But I can’t,” she insisted. “I was so sorry for her and so helpless that I really didn’t hear it all, anyway. I only know that it had something to do with an application or a premium or a policy, and her husband is very sick and she needs money.” Ross began to speculate. The ignorant have strange ideas of insurance, and very likely this woman thought she could insure a dying husband. His backbone began to stiffen at once. Of course such a thing was actually, as well as ethically, impossible, but it was going to be a very difficult matter to explain it to her, and he anticipated a distressing scene. His wife was interested in the woman, spoke frequently of her hardships and her courage, and had helped her to such trifling extent as they could afford. No doubt the woman had some wild notion that he, being an insurance man, could do this for her and would do it as a matter of charity. Ethical questions do not trouble such people. When she came, he was prepared for a request that was impossible in honor and in fact, and he was ready to refuse it with such gentleness as he deemed due to a weary and desperate woman who did not realize what she was asking—the gentleness of sympathy coupled with the firmness of principle. Ross was a young man, inclined to exaggerate the importance and difficulties of problems that confronted him, and he was disconcerted when he found he had made an error in the basis from which he had reached his conclusion; the woman did not wish to insure a dying husband, but to protect insurance he already carried. “Oh, good Mr. Ross,” she wailed, “you must fix it for me some way. If we don’t pay to-morrow, we’ll lose everything. And we haven’t the money, Mr. Ross, not enough to pay the doctor even, and it’s worrying Peter more than the sickness. But you can fix it for us—of course you can fix it for us,”—with appealing hopefulness. “Sit down, Mrs. Becker, and tell me about it,” he urged. “I don’t understand.”