Cowperwood responded quickly, for he knew of Butler, his rise, his connections, his force.  He called at the house as directed, one cold, crisp February morning.  He remembered the appearance of the street afterward—­broad, brick-paved sidewalks, macadamized roadway, powdered over with a light snow and set with young, leafless, scrubby trees and lamp-posts.  Butler’s house was not new—­he had bought and repaired it—­but it was not an unsatisfactory specimen of the architecture of the time.  It was fifty feet wide, four stories tall, of graystone and with four wide, white stone steps leading up to the door.  The window arches, framed in white, had U-shaped keystones.  There were curtains of lace and a glimpse of red plush through the windows, which gleamed warm against the cold and snow outside.  A trim Irish maid came to the 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.”