"Now, you don't want that much, Laughlin," Cowperwood suggested,
quite blandly. They were sitting in Laughlin's private office
between four and five in the afternoon, and Laughlin was chewing
tobacco with the sense of having a fine, interesting problem before
him. "I have a seat on the New York Stock Exchange," he went on,
"and that's worth forty thousand dollars. My seat on the Philadelphia
exchange is worth more than yours here. They will naturally figure
as the principal assets of the firm. It's to be in your name.
I'll be liberal with you, though. Instead of a third, which would
be fair, I'll make it forty-nine per cent., and we'll call the
firm Peter Laughlin & Co. I like you, and I think you can be of
a lot of use to me. I know you will make more money through me
than you have alone. I could go in with a lot of these silk-stocking
fellows around here, but I don't want to. You'd better decide
right now, and let's get to work.

Old Laughlin was pleased beyond measure that young Cowperwood
should want to go in with him. He had become aware of late that
all of the young, smug newcomers on 'change considered him an old
fogy. Here was a strong, brave young Easterner, twenty years his
junior, evidently as shrewd as himself--more so, he feared--who
actually proposed a business alliance. Besides, Cowperwood, in
his young, healthy, aggressive way, was like a breath of spring.

"I ain't keerin' so much about the name," rejoined Laughlin. "You
can fix it that-a-way if you want to. Givin' you fifty-one per
cent. gives you charge of this here shebang. All right, though;
I ain't a-kickin'. I guess I can manage allus to git what's
a-comin' to me.