"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 to see," said Isabel, thoughtfully. "People have bought the stock and banks have lent money on it without knowing whether the property was protected by insurance or not?" "On the contrary, rather assuming that it was. Your father's antipathy to insurance is a little unusual, you know. So far no one has ever made a point of bringing it strongly before the public. And banks and stock markets are queer things--and confidence is jarred with singular ease. There are a number of pretty important men in this town who would dislike to have some of their loans called or to have Massachusetts Light, Heat, and Traction drop ten or fifteen points. Of course this needn't happen--and for a preventative, apply to Charles Wilkinson, Esquire, restorer of lost confidences." Helen spoke. "Whose idea was this, did you say?" she asked. "His name was Smith," said Wilkinson, soberly.