"Oh, lots of them do," Wilkinson returned easily. "A few of the others may have had a streak of luck for a few years, just as you have had, but the rest take it all in the day's work, think that the rates may go up on account of the bad record of the class and then it would be an advantage to have the business on their books, or else they try to make it up on other better paying classes. And besides, they have the use of the money which is paid in premiums during good years when losses are light." Not for nothing had he listened to the painstaking explanations of Cole, and whatever his eccentricities, Charlie had a native shrewdness hardly second to that of old John M. himself. Perhaps the older man was thinking of this when he next spoke. "Then it has probably occurred to you that the Massachusetts Light, Heat, and Traction Company can do the same thing--and does. I use the interest and profits of my insurance fund which I have accumulated by not paying premiums, to pay losses. How about that?" "That would be all right if your properties were widely enough distributed. But they're not. Some day you'll get a big loss, which will wipe out your interest, profits, and fund all together for twenty years. Your fund's all right for cars that burn on the road or for small fires; but what if something big went? And the insurance money would come in very nicely when you most needed it. You'd have trouble enough on your hands without having to go out and raise money, too, if your new Pemberton Street barn should burn up with half a million dollars' worth of cars in it--which it is quite possible it may do at almost any time." "What! The new barn?" said the magnate, incredulously. "Why, my boy, that barn is the latest thing in fireproof construction! There isn't a stick of wood in that building from cellar to attic." "And the cars, are they fireproof, too?" John M. Hurd looked up sharply. "No," he said slowly. "No, I don't suppose they are. . . . Still, there's nothing to set the cars afire. They're safe enough in that building. Nothing can happen to them there." "The building itself is not located on a desert island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean," said his nephew, thoughtfully. "It _might_ be exposed to a serious fire in some of the neighboring buildings--that big paper-box factory, for example, across the alley to the south. There _might_, in fact,"--he paused--"there _might_ be a general fire in that part of Boston." "A conflagration, you mean? Nonsense! Boston is safe as a church." "Probably safer than St. Stephen's, out in Cambridge, that burned to the ground last week," returned his visitor, with a smile. "To be sure," said Mr. Hurd, hastily. "But there'll never be a big, sweeping fire in Boston." "Why not? There was one once."