"Stung? What do you mean?"
"I rather imagine that was a little confidence game."
"What is a confidence game?"
"Oh, a man gets money from people on false pretenses. They work a lot of games. One of them is to go to people whom they have looked up, and claim to be a relation or from their home town."
"But he knowed lots of names I knowed."
"Yes; he might have found them in a local paper from the place."
Drusilla sat back in her chair.
"Well, do tell!" Then, after a moment's pause, "But I don't believe he's dishonest. He looked honest. He looked like a man from the country."
"That's where they're clever. But don't worry; you can stand the touch—it wasn't much. You got off easy."
"But I don't like to think I bin cheated. It makes me mad clean through. It always did. I remember once I bought a cow when mother was bad; paid forty dollars for her to Silas Graham. He said she was young and would give fifteen quarts of milk a day, and I figgered out I could give mother all the milk she'd need and sell the rest and in that way pay for her, because forty dollars was a lot of money for me in them days. Why, when I got that cow she never give enough milk to wet down a salt risin', and she was as old as Methuselah. All she could do was to eat, and she et her head off. I couldn't see her starve and I couldn't sell her. I kept her for two years, and finally a butcher come along and offered me eight dollars for her and I let her go. Wasn't I mad! I never could abide any one by the name of Silas after that."