His second son, Callum, was a
clerk in the city water department and an assistant to his father also.
Aileen, his eldest daughter, fifteen years of age, was still in St.
Agatha's, a convent school in Germantown. Norah, his second daughter and
youngest child, thirteen years old, was in attendance at a local private
school conducted by a Catholic sisterhood. The Butler family had
moved away from South Philadelphia into Girard Avenue, near the twelve
hundreds, where a new and rather interesting social life was beginning.
They were not of it, but Edward Butler, contractor, now fifty-five years
of age, worth, say, five hundred thousand dollars, had many political
and financial friends. No longer a "rough neck," but a solid,
reddish-faced man, slightly tanned, with broad shoulders and a solid
chest, gray eyes, gray hair, a typically Irish face made wise and calm
and undecipherable by much experience. His big hands and feet indicated
a day when he had not worn the best English cloth suits and tanned
leather, but his presence was not in any way offensive--rather the
other way about. Though still possessed of a brogue, he was soft-spoken,
winning, and persuasive.

He had been one of the first to become interested in the development of
the street-car system and had come to the conclusion, as had Cowperwood
and many others, that it was going to be a great thing. The money
returns on the stocks or shares he had been induced to buy had been
ample evidence of that, He had dealt through one broker and another,
having failed to get in on the original corporate organizations.
He wanted to pick up such stock as he could in one organization and
another, for he believed they all had a future, and most of all he
wanted to get control of a line or two. In connection with this idea he
was looking for some reliable young man, honest and capable, who
would work under his direction and do what he said. Then he learned of
Cowperwood, and one day sent for him and asked him to call at his house.

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