He did not know just how Janice would take his surveillance, and the boy had decided it would be better for him to remain in the background unless something extraordinary happened and not reveal himself to her until they reached the Border.
So, to make his identification by his cousin doubly impossible, as he thought, Marty used the hour's wait at Chicago to supply himself with a disguise!
It is not on record that any boy ever lived who did not, at some stage of his career, dream of putting on some simple disguise and appearing before his friends and family as "the mysterious stranger." Marty was not exempt from the usual kinds of boyish folly. He bought and affixed to his upper lip a small black mustache.
The sturdy, freckled-faced boy with the stubby mustache stuck upon his lip, made a very amusing appearance. Under close scrutiny the falsity of his hirsute adornment was easily detected, of course.
The gentleman who had boarded the train at Chicago too late to obtain a berth was vastly amused by Marty's assumption of maturity. Marty's voice was beginning to change and that alone would have revealed his youth in spite of a full growth of whiskers.
"You're pretty young to be traveling alone," this gentleman remarked to Marty after the deal for the berth had been consummated. "Although I see you have all your wits about you, young man."
"Oh, I dunno," drawled the boy from Polktown, trying to stroke the mustache with a knowing air.
"I can see the mustache," grinned Marty's fellow-traveler. "But it isn't a very good fit and it certainly does not match your hair. That down on your cheek, young fellow, is a dead give away. I'd take off the mustache if I were you."
Marty flushed like a boiling lobster. "I—I can't," he stuttered.