"And still people go to beauty-doctors!" he growled, as he surveyed with disgust the meager results of his work.
"I'd singe it down a bit if I was sure it wasn't inflammable," he added. "But I'd hate to turn myself into a torch. Besides, I might lose it all, and that won't do—yet."
Then came to the boatman, as often to other persons, an idea. He turned to his tool-box and extracted therefrom an instrument which he regarded for an instant with doubtful eyes. Gritting his teeth, he faced the mirror once more.
You can bale out an ocean with a thimble if you have sufficient time and persistence. A task relatively similar is that of trimming a beard with a pair of wire-cutters. Sam set himself to it.
Compared with the operations of the discarded knife, it was happily free from serious pain. But it was mournfully slow. A wire-cutter is designed to sever one wire at a time, so its jaw, though powerful, is short. To the boatman it seemed an almost impossible feat to make the instrument cut more than one hair at a time.
He toiled doggedly, bending close to the little glass and twisting his head into such positions as promised the most favorable opportunity for attack. Patience was finally rewarded with a certain degree of expertness. The beard slowly diminished in length to an extent visible to the naked eye. Whether he was really achieving a Van Dyke he did not dare to guess, but he was at least bringing it to a point at the chin, and was cropping away some of its shagginess on the cheeks.
The mustache was a distinct problem. Twice he caught his upper lip between the jaws of the cutter and—swore.
"There!" he exclaimed at last. "If anybody objects to the effect let him say so at his own risk. Before I'll trim any more hair with a wire-cutter I'll let the blamed thing grow until—yes, even until Carrie Catt is President!"
Stripping himself of a gray flannel shirt, he next performed ablutions in a tin water-bucket, alternating soap with sand as he tried to reduce the grime that clung to his hands.
Again the wire-cutter came into play as he manicured his nails. Then there was a new period of torture when he drove the comb through locks that had not been raked for weeks.