He evidently suspected a joke.
"Why, no, ma'am," he drawled.

"You see, they was rentin' the place, not buyin' it." "But forty dollars a month is VERY cheap." "Is it?
Sho! Now you speak of it I remember that Captain Sam seemed to cal'late 'twas.

He said I ought to have asked a hundred, or some such foolishness.

I told him he must have the notion that I was left out of the sweet ile when they pickled the other thirty- nine thieves.

Perhaps you've read the story, ma'am," he suggested.
His visitor laughed.