“But how?”
“Did you not put Laura up to asking his name? You did. And did she not bring back the words Don Miff as the result of her investigations, and none of us ever suspected the plain English of the matter?”
Here Alice gave a little shriek and fell upon a sofa. “Just listen,” said I to Mary and Lucy, who were looking from Alice to me, and from me to Alice, with a bewildered air. “Listen carefully. J-o-h-n S-m-i-t-h, John Smith, or, according to Laura, Don Miff!”
“Impossible!” cried Mary, with a resolute stamp of her foot.
“But he told me his name himself.”
“I can’t help what he told you; but no one shall ever make me believe that his name is John Smith. There are people named Smith, of course.”
“No fair-minded person would deny that,” said Alice. “Why, Mary, there is your own Aunt Judy.”
“Yes, dear old Aunt Judy!” said Mary, smiling. “But John Smith, Alice,—John! How can you believe that any Smith, senior, in the full blaze of the nineteenth century, would name his son John?”
“I think it in the highest degree improbable,” said Alice.
“Improbable, Alice? Why, it is preposterous. At any rate, be there or be there not John Smiths in the world, that is not his name.”