"Yes, this time of year, but not so nice in winter when they don't clean the snow off the sidewalks."
He felt that it was a bit jerky. Perhaps he should first have asked her permission to call. What a goat he was not to think of that beforehand instead of now. He paused until the pause grew uncomfortable.
She tried to help him out, "We're out of the smoke belt, that's one thing."
He was seated in a rocking chair and began to rock violently, then suddenly he stopped and leaned toward her, his elbows on his knees.
"I've been slow getting to the point," he remarked abruptly, "but I came here on business."
"Oh, I wasn't just sure what."
Stevens took half a dozen life insurance advertising folders from his pocket. "You know this literature we're using," he said, running two or three through his fingers and indicating them by their titles, "'Do You Want Your Wife to Want When She's a Widow?' 'Friendship for the Fatherless,' 'Death's Dice Are Loaded.'"
"Oh, yes." She took them from him and read aloud. "'Over the Hills to the Poorhouse,' with a photograph of it, 'Will Your Little Girl Have to Scrub?' with thumbnail pictures of scrub ladies. Ugh, what a gloomy trade we're in, aren't we, Mr. Stevens?"
"This is the line of talk that gets the business." He spoke earnestly, tapping the folders. "You can't make papa dig up premiums for forty or fifty years unless you first scare him and scare him blue about his family."
"Yes, I suppose so."