“You must come with me, Mrs Marrot,” she said. “I’m so frightened in railways, you have no idea what a relief it is to me to have any one near me whom I know. I will change your tickets; let me have them, quick; we have no time to lose—there—now, wait till I return. Oh! I forgot your insurance tickets.”
“W’y, bless you, ma’am, we never insures.”
“You never insure!” exclaimed Mrs Tipps in amazement; “and it only costs you threepence for one thousand pounds.”
“Well, I don’t know nothink as to that—” said Mrs Marrot.
Before she could finish the sentence Mrs Tipps was gone.
She returned in breathless haste, beckoned Mrs Marrot and Gertie to follow her, and was finally hurried with them into a first-class carriage just as the train began to move.
Their only other companion in the carriage was a stout little old gentleman with a bright complexion, speaking eyes, and a countenance in which benevolence appeared to struggle with enthusiasm for the mastery. He was obviously one of those men who delight in conversation, and he quickly took an opportunity of engaging in it. Observing that Mrs Tipps presented an insurance ticket to each of her companions, he said—
“I am glad to see, madam, that you are so prudent as to insure the lives of your friends.”
“I always insure my own life,” replied Mrs Tipps with a little smile, “and feel it incumbent on me at least to advise my friends to do the same.”
“Quite right, quite right, madam,” replied the enthusiastic little man, applying his handkerchief to his bald pate with such energy that it shone like a billiard ball, “quite right, madam. I only wish that the public at large were equally alive to the great value of insurance against accident. W’y, ma’am, it’s a duty, a positive duty,” (here he addressed himself to Mrs Marrot) “to insure one’s life against accident.”