or two?"

"Not at all. It isn't as important as that. Come as soon as you can
straighten things out. I don't want to inconvenience your employers."

It was only two weeks later that Frank took his departure from Waterman
& Company, interested and yet in no way flustered by his new prospects.
And great was the grief of Mr. George Waterman. As for Mr. Henry
Waterman, he was actually irritated by this defection.

"Why, I thought," he exclaimed, vigorously, when informed by Cowperwood
of his decision, "that you liked the business. Is it a matter of
salary?"

"No, not at all, Mr. Waterman. It's just that I want to get into the
straight-out brokerage business."

"Well, that certainly is too bad. I'm sorry. I don't want to urge you
against your own best interests. You know what you are doing. But George
and I had about agreed to offer you an interest in this thing after a
bit. Now you're picking up and leaving. Why, damn it, man, there's good
money in this business."

"I know it," smiled Cowperwood, "but I don't like it. I have other plans
in view. I'll never be a grain and commission man." Mr. Henry Waterman
could scarcely understand why obvious success in this field did not
interest him. He feared the effect of his departure on the business.

And once the change was made Cowperwood was convinced that this new work
was more suited to him in every way--as easy and more profitable, of
course. In the first place, the firm of Tighe & Co., unlike that of
Waterman & Co., was located in a handsome green-gray stone building
at 66 South Third Street, in what was then, and for a number of years
afterward, the heart of the financial district. Great institutions of
national and international import and repute were near at hand--Drexel
& Co., Edward Clark & Co., the Third National Bank, the First National
Bank, the Stock Exchange, and similar institutions. Almost a score of
smaller banks and brokerage firms were also in the vicinity. Edward
Tighe, the head and brains of this concern, was a Boston Irishman,
the son of an immigrant who had flourished and done well in that
conservative city. He had come to Philadelphia to interest himself in
the speculative life there. "Sure, it's a right good place for those of
us who are awake," he told his friends, with a slight Irish accent, and
he considered himself very much awake. He was a medium-tall man, not
very stout, slightly and prematurely gray, and with a manner which was
as lively and