business or keep out of any one else's. The
price paid, so the doctor says he's heard, runs all the way from eight
dollars a share up to fourteen and a half. Poor old Mrs. Badger--Darius
Badger's widow--got the eight dollars. She was somethin' like me, I
guess--had given up the idea of ever gettin' a cent--and so she took
the first offer Raish made her. Eben Snow got the fourteen and a half,
I believe, the highest price. He needed it less than anybody else, which
is usually the way. Doctor Powers sold his for twelve and a half. Said
he thought, when he was doin' it, that he was mighty lucky. Now he
wishes he hadn't sold at all, but had waited. 'Don't sell yours for a
penny less than fifteen, Martha,' he told me. 'There's somethin' up.
Either Raish has heard somethin' and is buyin' for a speculation,
or else he's actin' as somebody else's agent.' What did you say, Mr.
Bangs?"

Galusha had not said anything; and what he said now was neither
brilliant nor original.

"Dear me, dear me!" he murmured. Martha looked at him, keenly.

"Why, what is it, Mr. Bangs?" she asked. "Raish's buyin' the stock won't
make any difference to you, will it?"

"Eh?... To ME? Why--why, of course not. Dear me, no. Why--ah--how could
it make any difference to me?"

"I didn't mean you, yourself. I meant to the Cabot, Bancroft and Cabot
people, or whoever it was that bought my stock."

"Oh--oh, oh! To them? Oh, yes, yes! I thought for the moment you
referred to me personally. Ha, ha! That would have been very--ah--funny,
wouldn't it? No, I don't think it will make any difference to
Cousin--ah--I mean to the purchasers of your shares. No, no,
indeed--ah--yes. Quite so."

If Miss Phipps noticed a slight incoherence in this speech, she did not
comment upon it. Galusha blinked behind his spectacles and passed a hand
across his forehead. His landlady continued her story.

"I asked Doctor Powers what reason Raish was givin' people for his
buyin'. The doctor said he gave reasons enough, but they weren't very
satisfyin' ones to a thinkin' person. Raish said he owned a big block of
the stock himself and yet it wasn't big enough to give him much say as
to what should be done with the company. Of course, nothin' could be
done with it at present, but still some time there might and so he
thought he might as well be hung for an old sheep as a lamb and buy in
what he could get, provided he could get it cheap enough. He had come to
the doctor first, he