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"How about it? Two months?"
"Certainly not."
"Three?"
"Well, maybe."
"No maybe in that case. We marry."
"But you're only a boy."
"Don't worry about me. You'll find out how much of a boy I am."
He seemed of a sudden to open up a new world to her, and she realized that she had never
really lived before. This man represented something bigger and stronger than ever her husband
had dreamed of. In his young way he was terrible, irresistible.
"Well, in three months then," she whispered, while he rocked her cozily in his arms.
Chapter IX
Cowperwood started in the note brokerage business with a small office at No. 64 South Third
Street, where he very soon had the pleasure of discovering that his former excellent business
connections remembered him. He would go to one house, where he suspected ready money
might be desirable, and offer to negotiate their notes or any paper they might issue bearing six
per cent. interest for a commission and then he would sell the paper for a small commission to
some one who would welcome a secure investment. Sometimes his father, sometimes other
people, helped him with suggestions as to when and how. Between the two ends he might
make four and five per cent. on the total transaction. In the first year he cleared six thousand
dollars over and above all expenses. That wasn't much, but he was augmenting it in another
way which he believed would bring great profit in the future.
Before the first street-car line, which was a shambling affair, had been laid on Front Street, the
streets of Philadelphia had been crowded with hundreds of springless omnibuses rattling over
rough, hard, cobblestones. Now, thanks to the idea of John Stephenson, in New York, the
double rail track idea had come, and besides the line on Fifth and Sixth Streets (the cars
running out one street and back on another) which had paid splendidly from the start, there
were many other lines proposed or under way. The city was as eager to see street-cars replace
omnibuses as it was to see railroads replace canals. There was opposition, of course. There
always is in such cases. The cry of probable monopoly was raised. Disgruntled and defeated
omnibus owners and drivers groaned aloud.
Cowperwood had implicit faith in the future of the street railway. In support of this belief he
risked all he could spare on new issues of stock shares in new companies. He wanted to be on
the inside wherever possible, always, though this was a little difficult in the matter of the street-
railways, he having been so young when they started and not having yet arranged his financial
connections to make them count for much. The Fifth and Sixth Street line, which had been but
recently started, was paying six hundred dollars a day. A project for a West Philadelphia line
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