they had on each other, and faced us with
considerable resentment showing in their faces, though Teresa didn't
get off Tooter's lap, as I thought she would.

"Well, what do you mean by this impudent intrusion, Holmes?" demanded
Tooter angrily. "I guess a man can hold his affianced wife in his lap
if he feels like it, without having a cheeky detective walk in on
him."

"Your what?" asked Holmes, with surprise.

"My affianced wife, I said. And it's none of your business, either,
any more than it is my niece's, or the Earl's. We had planned to elope
and get married in London this afternoon, but I suppose now you'll run
around and tell everybody in sight what you know."

Tooter whispered something to Teresa, whereupon she gave him a parting
kiss, flounced off his lap, and passed out of the room, with her head
high in the air, her black eyes snapping, and saying something that
sounded like: "Impertinent loafers!" as she passed us.

Uncle Tooter arose from the rocker and stood by the window, where he
seemed to be trying to slide something from his left hand into his
left trousers-pocket, his right side being turned to us.

Holmes noticed the act, as did I, but said nothing of it for the
moment.

"Well, Tooter, by George, I'm surprised at you," he commented
sarcastically; "to think that at your advanced age,--and you
must be pretty well up in the fifties,--you'd fall for the
sweet-love-in-the-springtime stuff that gets the younger people,
and that you'd engage yourself in marriage with a servant, too,
and one who had previously refused you a couple of times. Of
course, as you say, it's none of my business, but I'm used to
having people tell me that; and furthermore, it comes within the
line of my duty to intrude my nose into other people's business
whenever I judge it to be warranted by the circumstances. Teresa
has been accused by Natalie, the first chambermaid, of having
stolen the diamond cuff-buttons----"

"Which is an infernal lie, and I can prove it!" shouted Tooter.

"And you have been accused inferentially by the Earl of possible guilt
in connection with the theft also, owing to your occasional lapses
from sobriety, which is rather a polite way of putting it," went on
the unperturbed Holmes. "By the way, I'll just trouble you for that
little package you slid into your left trousers-pocket there."

Tooter flushed with embarrassment, and refused point-blank.

"Watson, lock the door, and put the key in your