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door and he gave her his card and was invited into the house.
"Is Mr. Butler home?"
"I'm not sure, sir. I'll find out. He may have gone out."
In a little while he was asked to come upstairs, where he found Butler in a somewhat
commercial-looking room. It had a desk, an office chair, some leather furnishings, and a
bookcase, but no completeness or symmetry as either an office or a living room. There were
several pictures on the wall--an impossible oil painting, for one thing, dark and gloomy; a canal
and barge scene in pink and nile green for another; some daguerreotypes of relatives and
friends which were not half bad. Cowperwood noticed one of two girls, one with reddish-gold
hair, another with what appeared to be silky brown. The beautiful silver effect of the
daguerreotype had been tinted. They were pretty girls, healthy, smiling, Celtic, their heads close
together, their eyes looking straight out at you. He admired them casually, and fancied they
must be Butler's daughters.
"Mr. Cowperwood?" inquired Butler, uttering the name fully with a peculiar accent on the vowels.
(He was a slow-moving man, solemn and deliberate.) Cowperwood noticed that his body was
hale and strong like seasoned hickory, tanned by wind and rain. The flesh of his cheeks was
pulled taut and there was nothing soft or flabby about him.
"I'm that man."
"I have a little matter of stocks to talk over with you" ("matter" almost sounded like "mather"),
"and I thought you'd better come here rather than that I should come down to your office. We
can be more private-like, and, besides, I'm not as young as I used to be."
He allowed a semi-twinkle to rest in his eye as he looked his visitor over.
Cowperwood smiled.
"Well, I hope I can be of service to you," he said, genially.
"I happen to be interested just at present in pickin' up certain street-railway stocks on 'change.
I'll tell you about them later. Won't you have somethin' to drink? It's a cold morning."
"No, thanks; I never drink."
"Never? That's a hard word when it comes to whisky. Well, no matter. It's a good rule. My boys
don't touch anything, and I'm glad of it. As I say, I'm interested in pickin' up a few stocks on
'change; but, to tell you the truth, I'm more interested in findin' some clever young felly like
yourself through whom I can work. One thing leads to another, you know, in this world." And he
looked at his visitor non-committally, and yet with a genial show of interest.
"Quite so," replied Cowperwood, with a friendly gleam in return.
"Well," Butler meditated, half to himself, half to Cowperwood, "there are a number of things that
a bright young man could do for me in the street if he were so minded. I have two bright boys of
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