"The inspectors I spoke of, for one thing; the map makers who make the pretty brown buildings in Deerfield Street; the rate makers who go around applying schedules to buildings, and from the various hazards of construction, occupancy, and exposure fixing the rate which the schedule brings out; the stamping bureaus that check the rates as the agents send through the business. And then there are the field men, called special agents, who travel from agency to agency, appointing and discontinuing agents, straightening out difficulties, adjusting losses, and making themselves generally useful. All these the underwriter has to help him, as well as information such as building inspections by cities, police regulations, fire alarm systems, municipal rules and vagaries of all sorts--oh, a category of things as long as one's arm, which of course an underwriter doesn't actually himself supervise, but whose accuracy he must be able to estimate--and often repair if they get out of order and cease to run smoothly." "But--" said the girl, slowly. "But what?" Smith asked. "But isn't it awfully technical, this business? I had an idea that fire insurance was done principally by clerks writing endlessly in large books. That's what they always seem to be doing in Mr. Osgood's office. And now you tell me it's like this. This is absolutely different from what I thought it was, and it seems incredibly difficult, but--" "Well, but what?" demanded her companion. "Well, then--it seems to me a little dry. Or perhaps not exactly that, but a little too scientific, too technical. Not so vivid, so vital--" She stopped short at the expression of Smith's face. CHAPTER IX "Not vital!" he exclaimed, getting out of his chair and facing her. "Not vital! Really, Miss Maitland, what can you call vital? Fire insurance is as vital as anything in the world of business to-day--or in any world that I know anything about." He paused, and some of the indignation went out of his eyes. "I beg your pardon," he said more gently. "I had thought I was making you understand." "You were--you were," Helen hastened to assure him; but he shook his head. "Not if you think, after all, that fire insurance isn't vital." "I'm afraid I chose my word badly. What I meant, perhaps, was that it wasn't picturesque. It isn't that, is it--as the word is generally understood?" "You mean it isn't building bridges over boiling chasms three thousand feet below in the Andes river bottoms; it isn't leading ragged armies of half-baked South American natives against a mud stockade; it isn't shooting African animals and dining on quinine and hippopotamus liver. No, there's none of the soldier of fortune business about it. But vital! My heavens! what do you call vital?"