"Only once, Wood," he replied. "I believe she was on her way to Europe—to study. But for the life of me I can't recall just what—music, I think. That was—let me see—yes, it was a year or two before the war began and she may have been stuck there. No, she had not married, and I wonder why. I believe she was the most beautiful woman I ever saw. She was simply wonderful."
In a day or two I started out to see little Jim. I had to coach her for the witness stand and make good my promise to Howard.
I had been losing sleep and decided to go in the chair car and have a couple hours' rest while riding, and for the first time I got a full view of myself in the big mirror in the end of the car. I was quite unable to recognize myself, and wondered how the change would affect little Jim.
You know it seems a belief among persons who should have better sense that men in our work can make a lightning change by the use of false beards, wigs and the like, when, as a matter of fact, such flimsy attempts to camouflage exist only in the poor minds of story writers and can be practiced only on the stage and in the movies; in life such a thing would be an advertisement. Even a wig is so rare that it attracts instant attention, and is utterly useless as a disguise.
When it seems necessary to make a change in our appearance it takes from two to three months, and as I had been undergoing such a change preparatory for something special it was a wonder Howard recognized me. It was a distinct shock when I saw myself in the mirror at the end of the car, from head to shoes.
My red wire-grass had been clipped to the skin and a broad-brimmed, low-crowned hat of a Quaker or Mennonite planted there. My beard had grown like weeds until I had a three-inch brush on my face, with the exception of my shaven upper lip. A limp, white shirt, celluloid collar and black tie, and a black Prince Albert covered my bones well below my shins, where baggy black trousers joined rough brogans laced with leather strings. Anyone could recognize in me a mountebank medicine vender, a lying horse trader or horse thief—there is not much difference between the two—or leader of some crazy religious cult, a Greenwich Village Bolsheviki or anyone who at first sight could be depended on to be tricky and irrational on serious things.
I was afraid little Jim would not recognize me. She had developed wonderfully fast, and with a sense of humor was able to recall her first experience with me as a salesman of ship chandlery. When they sent her to me in the private office of the registrar it was hard to tell who was the more surprised. She hesitated at the door with a delightful naïvetté, thinking some mistake had been made when she first saw me.
"Come in, little Jim, I want to see you."
Her face changed to mystified interest, as she closed the door and came toward me, trying her best to recognize a familiar voice who knew her as little Jim.