What a fool I had been not to have seen about that insurance before it expired!
We, all of us, Larsen, and Jones—got down to the store at six o'clock the next morning. Wilkes, it seems, hadn't been awakened by the alarm, and very much astonished he was when he arrived later and learned of the fire. We went over things carefully, and fortunately found that the damage was not very great. The front door was broken; the back door had been burned, and the woodwork around it; and some panes of glass broken. The four cases had been burned to a crisp, but, of course, that didn't amount to anything. Altogether, the damage did not amount to more than fifty dollars, and, of course, the building was covered by insurance and that loss didn't fall on me. There were a few odds and ends which had been blackened a little by smoke, and water had fallen on a few pans and made rust spots, but the damage wasn't much.
You can be sure that the first thing I did was to chase down to Joe Pelton's to get that insurance fixed up in double-quick order. When I got there I learned that he was out of town, but was expected back about three o'clock in the afternoon. I left word for him to come down and see me just the minute he got back.
About twelve o'clock I got a long-distance call from Mr. Field, the secretary of the Hardware Association. How he heard about it I don't know.
"I hear you had a fire, Mr. Black," he said. "Much damage done?"
"No, fortunately not," I replied.
"What about your insurance?"
"I'm ashamed to say it,"—and I blushed when I told him,—"but my policy had just run out, and I had not renewed it."
"I'm glad the damage wasn't much, Mr. Black. But now you want to insure through your association,"—and then he gave me facts and figures showing how much cheaper and safer it was to insure through the association. I didn't bother much to understand, because I was so anxious to get it fixed up, and it wasn't certain anyway that Pelton would be back in the afternoon, so I told him to go ahead and fix it up in double-quick order.
He mentioned one thing that was new to me, and that was about the co-insurance clause. We were talking about how much insurance to have, and he told me to be sure and have at least eighty per cent. of the value of my stock, otherwise I was a co-insurer with the company, and in case of loss would receive only a certain percentage of the amount of damage.