“So many women have beaten me,” said Murray at last, “that I should really like to beat one of them, especially when it’s for her own good. Bring your wife up here, and I’ll see what I can do.”
But here again feminine capriciousness was exemplified. Having apparently won her point, Isabel Beckford began to wish she had lost it.
“I’m afraid,” she said. “Suppose I should find that something frightful was the matter with me? Those insurance doctors are awfully particular, and—and—I’d rather not know it, if I’m going to die very soon.”
“Oh, very well,” acquiesced her husband. “We’ll go back to my original plan and put the whole ten thousand dollars on my life.”
“No, no, no!” she protested. “It would be even worse, if I learned that there was anything wrong with you. I couldn’t bear it, Harry; I couldn’t, really! There wouldn’t be anything left in life for me. Let’s not go at all.”
“That’s foolish, Isabel,” he argued. “I’m all right, and the very fact that I am accepted as a good risk will remove every doubt.”
“That’s so,” she admitted. “We’ll be sure, then, won’t we?”
“Of course.”
“Then we’ll both go,” she announced, with a sudden reversal of judgment. “I hadn’t thought of it that way, but I’ll feel a lot better and stronger when I’m insured, because the companies are so particular, and it will be comforting to know that you are all right. It’s worth something to find that out, isn’t it? And sometimes a family physician won’t tell you the truth, because it won’t do any good and he doesn’t want to frighten you. We’ll go right away and see about it now.”
“Hardly this evening,” he answered, smiling, although he was sorely troubled. “We’ll go to-morrow afternoon.”