"The poor dear child--Edith and I have sized it up--was all over
him that evening."
"What more youthfully natural," said I, "than that she should
carry off the hero of the occasion--her childhood's playfellow?"
"All sorts of apparently insignificant details, Duncan, taken
together--especially if they fit in--very often make up a whole
case for prosecution."
"You're a Chairman of Quarter Sessions," I admitted, "and so you
ought to know."
"I know this," said he, "that Holmes only spent part of that
Christmas vacation with his mother, and went off somewhere or the
other early in January." I cudgelled back my memory into
confirmation of his statement. To remember trivial incidents
before the war takes a lot of cudgelling. Yes. I distinctly
recollected the young man's telling me that Oxford being an
intellectual hothouse and Wellingsford an intellectual Arabia
Petrea, he was compelled, for the sake of his mental health, to
find a period of repose in the intellectual Nature of London. I
mentioned this to Sir Anthony.
"Yet," I said, "I don't think he had anything to do with it."
"Why?"
"It would have been far too much moral exertion--"
"You call it moral?" Sir Anthony burst out angrily.
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