"Ah, but insurance companies must differentiate," said Mr. Smith. "There are so many kinds of accidents that it is absolutely necessary to have grades and classes and differences and distinctions. You are insured against lightning: you belong to A No. 1. If you were insured against a broken leg you would be in X No. 2, or against a sprained wrist in H No. 3. My recollection is that our policies of insurance against poison ivy are written in Q No. 4, but I am not positive. If, however, you care to profit by this annoying experience and desire to insure against ivy poison, I will look the matter up the first thing to-morrow and write you out a policy at once. In your case the policy should be made out for a period of fourteen years, since your present dose of poison will not lose its efficacy for seven years, and that will render insurance taken _after the fact_ inoperative."
There was a heavy thunder shower the next day, and I stood out in it all the time in the hope of getting a chance to claim remuneration from the Wabash Mutual Internecine Association. But the lightning dodged me as if I had been a sacred and charmed object. I made up my mind that it was folly to try to get even with the insurance concern, and since a farming career was now closed against me, I determined to devote my spare time to watching the progress of affairs inside our new house and to coöperate with Alice and Adah and our feminine neighbors in their herculean task of "having things as they should be."
It did not take me long to find out that, in the treatment of the interior of the new house, Alice had fallen a victim to the influence of the Denslow-Baylor-Maria schools. I was not much surprised by this discovery, for I had known for some time that Alice regarded the Denslows and the Baylors as people of rare taste, and it was quite natural (as every unprejudiced person will allow) that, associating with Adah continually and being bound to her by ties of consanguinity, Alice should be susceptible to Adah's hortations, incitements, impulsations, and instigations.
At any rate, I found that our new house was to be a conspicuous intermingling and interblending of the Denslow, Baylor, and Maria styles of architecture. The big front room downstairs, the library, was distinctly Denslowish, and so was the big front room up-stairs, as well as the butler's pantry and the reception-room. The Baylor influence manifested itself in the spare bedroom and the dining-room, and the Maria influence (thanks to Adah) was clearly exhibited in the front and side porches, in my bedroom, and in the several hallways. Alice insisted that the house was to be strictly old colonial and also requested me to speak of it as such in the presence of visitors, particularly in the hearing of her relatives from the country when they came into the city next September to do their winter buying.