(It was now Cowperwood & Co.

The company was fiction purely.) He asked him something about the street; how the market was running; what he knew about street-railways.

Finally he outlined his plan of buying all he could of the stock of two given lines--the Ninth and Tenth and the Fifteenth and Sixteenth--without attracting any attention, if possible.

It was to be done slowly, part on 'change, part from individual holders.

He did not tell him that there was a certain amount of legislative pressure he hoped to bring to bear to get him franchises for extensions in the regions beyond where the lines now ended, in order that when the time came for them to extend their facilities they would have to see him or his sons, who might be large minority stockholders in these very concerns.