“We must do what we can for her,” said Storms. “With the material which I have on hand we can construct garments that will keep her clad with comeliness, though she may not be in the fashion; and yet I don’t know but what she will,” he added, with a smile, “for we may strike some of the vagaries without knowing it. Then, too, she must be educated.”
“I’m not well up in the line of an education,” said the captain, with some embarrassment, “being as I never attended any other than a district school, but I believe you graduated, didn’t you, Abe?”
“Yes, I went through Harvard three years ago, and stood second in my class. I haven’t any fear that I won’t be able to teach her, for she is a child of unusual brightness.”
And, as may be supposed, the mate went to work thoroughly in the instruction of Inez Hawthorne, who proved herself one of the most apt of pupils, and advanced with a rapidity which delighted her teacher.
CHAPTER XXIV
THREE YEARS
Three years have passed, and still Captain Bergen, Mate Storms and Inez Hawthorne are upon the lonely Pearl Island in the South Sea.
Could they have believed when they left Boston that they would be doomed to such an imprisonment, it may well be doubted whether they would have made the voyage, even if assured of the vast fortune which thereby came into their hands.