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 pocket!" yelled Holmes.