“It didn’t need a whole lot of real money,” explained Martha.  “Most folks that owned that land had owned it for mercy knows how long and had done nothin’ but pay taxes on it, so they were glad enough to sell for somethin’ down to bind what Raish and Jethro called ‘options.’  Anyhow, when the Eagle people finally started in to put their grand plan into workin’, they bumped bows on into a shoal, at least that’s the way father used to tell about it.  They found that all that Skoonic Creek land was in the hands of Raish Pulcifer and Cap’n Jeth Hallett; those two either owned it outright or had options where they didn’t own.”

At first the Eagle Company declined to have anything to do with the new owners.  They declared the whole affair off, so far as the Skoonic Creek location was concerned, and announced their intention of going elsewhere.  But there was no sufficiently attractive “elsewhere” to go.  There followed much proposing and counter-proposing and, at last, an entirely new deal.  A new corporation was formed, its name The Wellmouth Development Company.

“I don’t know a great deal about it,” confessed Martha, “that is, not about the reasons for it and all, but, as near as I can make out, Raish and Jethro wouldn’t sell outright to the Eagle Company, but wanted to come in on the profits from the cold storage business, which were pretty big sometimes.  And they couldn’t get into the reg’lar Eagle Fish Freezing Company, the old one.  So they and the Eagle folks together undertook to form this new thing, the Development Company, the name meanin’ nothin’ or a whole lot, ‘cordin’ to how the development developed, I presume likely.  The capital stock—­I know all this because Cap’n Jethro and father used to talk it over so much between ’em and Cap’n Jeth and I have talked so much since—­was fifty thousand.  An awful lot of money, isn’t it, Mr. Bangs?”

Her tone was awe-stricken as she mentioned the amount.  Galusha gravely admitted that it was an “awful lot of money.”  All sums were awful to him; he would have agreed if the Wellmouth Development Company had been capitalized from one thousand to a million.  Miss Phipps went on.

“They put out the stock somethin’ like this:  The Eagle folks took pretty near half, somewhere around twelve hundred shares, I think they had.  And Raish he took five hundred shares, and Cap’n Jeth four hundred, and father—­after listenin’ to Jethro and Raish talk about dividends and profit sharin’ and such till, as he said, the tar on his top riggin’ began to melt, he drew out money from the savin’s bank and sold some other bonds and stocks he had and went in for two hundred and fifty shares.  Twenty dollars a share it was; did I tell you that?  Yes, five thousand dollars father put into that Development Company.  It seemed like a lot even then; but, my soul and body, what a lot it seems to me now!”

She paused for an instant, then sighed, and continued.