"Yes."
"By any chance, do you know a friend of mine, Charles Bonnell?"
"He's my uncle."
And right there in the presence of the boy in blue-striped pajamas, my mind went back over the years. Twenty-seven years ago, I had come to New York, and grown to know the tall, quiet man, six feet two he was, and kind to small boys. He was head of a book-store then and now. For these twenty-seven years I have known him, one of my best friends, and here was his nephew.
"Do you think I'm taller than my uncle?" the boy asked, standing up. He stood erect: you would never have known there was any trouble down below. But as my eye went up and down the fine slim figure, I saw that his right leg was off at the knee.
"I can't play base-ball any more," he said.
"No, but you can go to the games," said the director; "that's all the most of us do.
"I wish I had come here sooner," he went on as he sat back on the bed: standing was a strain. He meant he might have saved his leg.
We came away.
"Now he wants to go into the flying corps," said the surgeon.