autious
I might have been more wise, but I was half crazy with fear that you
should learn the truth.

"It was you who told me first that the cottage was occupied. I should
have waited for the morning, but I could not sleep for excitement, and
so at last I slipped out, knowing how difficult it is to awake you. But
you saw me go, and that was the beginning of my troubles. Next day you
had my secret at your mercy, but you nobly refrained from pursuing your
advantage. Three days later, however, the nurse and child only just
escaped from the back door as you rushed in at the front one. And now
to-night you at last know all, and I ask you what is to become of us, my
child and me?" She clasped her hands and waited for an answer.

It was a long ten minutes before Grant Munro broke the silence, and
when his answer came it was one of which I love to think. He lifted
the little child, kissed her, and then, still carrying her, he held his
other hand out to his wife and turned towards the door.

"We can talk it over more comfortably at home," said he. "I am not a
very good man, Effie, but I think that I am a better one than you have
given me credit for being."

Holmes and I followed them down the lane, and my friend plucked at my
sleeve as we came out.

"I think," said he, "that we shall be of more use in London than in
Norbury."

Not another word did he say of the case until late that night, when he
was turning away, with his lighted candle, for his bedroom.

"Watson," said he, "if it should ever strike you that I am getting a
little over-confident in my powers, or giving less pains to a case
than it deserves, kindly whisper 'Norbury' in my ear, and I shall be
infinitely obliged to you."

Adventure III. The Stock-Broker's Clerk

Shortly after my marriage I had bought a connection in the Paddington
district. Old Mr. Farquhar, from whom I purchased it, had at one time an
excellent general practice; but his age, and an affliction of the nature
of St. Vitus's dance from which he suffered, had very much thinned it.
The public not unnaturally goes on the principle that he who would heal
others must himself be whole, and looks askance at the curative powers
of the man whose own case is beyond the reach of his drugs. Thus as my
predecessor weakened his practice declined, until when I purchased
it from him it had sunk from twelve hundred to little more than three
hundred a year. I had confidence, however, in my own youth