The captain and mate smiled, for a little piece of strategy had succeeded. They had never before got the girl to give the name of her aunt, though she mentioned that of her uncle. But she now spoke it, her memory refreshed by the slight teasing to which she was subjected.
“That’s very good. I’m glad to learn that your uncle and aunt had two such pretty names as Con and Letitia Bumblebee.”
“Ain’t you ashamed of yourself?” demanded Inez, turning upon him with flashing eyes. “I never heard of such a funny name as that.”
“I beg pardon. What, then, is their name?”
The little head was bent and the fair brow wrinkled with thought. She had tried the same thing before, though it must be believed that she could not have tried very hard, or she would not have failed to remember the name of those with whom she lived but a 64 short time before. But she used her brain to its utmost now, and it did not take her long to solve the question. In a few seconds she looked up and laughed.
“Of course I know their name. It was Hermann, though he sometimes called himself George Smith.”
“The other sounds German,” remarked Storms, in a lower voice. “Go ahead and get all you can from her.”
“How long did you live with them?”
“Let me see,” said Inez, as she turned her lustrous blue eyes toward the roof of the cabin, as if she expected to read the answer there. “I guess it was about two––three hundred years.”
She was in earnest, and Storms observed: