The financier looked sharply at the young man; but he felt that he was scarcely in a position to take offense at such a commendable statement. "My business," continued the visitor, "deals with one of the best single pieces of business you ever did for the Massachusetts Light, Heat, and Traction Company." "Is the loss finally closed up?" said Mr. Hurd, curtly. His son-in-law stood dramatically before him; he slipped his left hand into the inner breast pocket where reposed the documents with which his coup was to be made. "Mr. Hurd," he said impressively, "you permitted me to place the insurance on your trolley system because I convinced you that it ought to be insured. Do you recall what I said about the conflagration hazard in the congested district of Boston? Well, I won't repeat it, but until I called it to your notice you had never given it serious consideration. And even after the schedule was placed, you said that another year you would not carry insurance. You may also recall that you withheld your consent to a certain marriage, which I proposed to contract with a member of your family, and which--" "Stick to the matter in hand," suggested the traction magnate, tartly. "I am doing so, because the point I want to make is this. On both these matters, if you'll pardon my saying so, you were equally wrong. You were afraid that as a son-in-law all my entries would be on the wrong side of your ledger. Well, I don't believe I'll overdraw my account with you for some little time, Mr. Hurd, for I hand you herewith--as we say to our stenographers--to the order of the Massachusetts Light, Heat, and Traction Company, checks and drafts to the amount of three hundred and fifty-five thousand, six hundred and eighty-seven dollars and fifty-two cents, in payment of the loss on your Pemberton Street car barn and power house and a few minor items. Here they are, and, to use a colloquialism, I want to rub them in. Not to glorify my own acumen or to minimize yours,--you showed good judgment to insure your property,--but to prove to you that you made a mistake about me." "A mistake?" said the other man. "A colossal mistake. Your only objection to me as a son-in-law was on financial grounds. Show me, if you can, any young man you could have picked out as a husband for your daughter, who within a few months could have saved your company three hundred and fifty thousand dollars. No, Mr. Hurd, you've done me a very great injustice. And now, I'm going to ask two things of you." "And what are they?" inquired Mr. Hurd. "The first is your order for rewriting the schedule on the traction properties. We'll take up the second when we've finished that."