“Well,” grunted the light keeper, “I'll listen to you for the five minutes, Raish, but no more. I hadn't ought to do that. This is Sabbath day and I make it a p'int never—”
“I know,” hastily, “I know. Well, I tell you, Cap'n Jeth, all's I wanted to say was this: What are we goin' to do with this Development stock of ours?”
“Do with it? Why, nothin' at present. CAN'T do anything with it, can we? All we can do is wait. It may be one year or three, but some day somebody will have to come to us. There ain't a better place for a cold storage fish house on this coast and the Wellmouth Development Company owns that place.”
“Yes, that's so, that's so. But some of us can afford to wait and some can't. Now I've got more of the Development Company stock than anybody else. I've got five hundred shares, Cap'n Jeth; five hundred shares at twenty dollars a share. A poor man like me can't afford to have ten thousand dollars tied up as long's this is liable to be. Can he now? Eh? Can he, Cap'n?”
“Humph! Well, I've got eight thousand tied up there myself.”
“Ye-es, but it don't make so much difference to you. You can afford to wait. You've got a gov'ment job.”
“Ye-es, and from what I hear you may be havin' a state job pretty soon yourself, Raish. Well, never mind that. What is it you're drivin' at, anyhow?”
“Why, I tell you, Jeth. Course you know and I know that this is a perfectly sure investment to anybody that'll wait. I can't afford to wait, that's what's the matter. It kind of run acrost my mind that maybe you'd like to have my holdin's, my five hundred shares. I'll sell 'em to you reasonable.”
“Humph! I want to know! What do you call reasonable?”
“I'll sell 'em to you for—for—well, say nineteen dollars a share.”