“Aaron’s rod is putting forth again,” he said, smiling.

“What?” said Aaron, looking up.

“I said Aaron’s rod is putting forth again.”

“What rod?”

“Your flute, for the moment.”

“It’s got to put forth my bread and butter.”

“Is that all the buds it’s going to have?”

“What else!”

“Nay—that’s for you to show. What flowers do you imagine came out of the rod of Moses’s brother?”

“Scarlet runners, I should think if he’d got to live on them.”

“Scarlet enough, I’ll bet.”

Aaron turned unnoticing back to his music. Lilly finished the wiping of the dishes, then took a book and sat on the other side of the table.

“It’s all one to you, then,” said Aaron suddenly, “whether we ever see one another again?”

“Not a bit,” said Lilly, looking up over his spectacles. “I very much wish there might be something that held us together.”

“Then if you wish it, why isn’t there?”

“You might wish your flute to put out scarlet–runner flowers at the joints.”

“Ay—I might. And it would be all the same.”

The moment of silence that followed was extraordinary in its hostility.

“Oh, we shall run across one another again some time,” said Aaron.

“Sure,” said Lilly. Lilly “More than that: I’ll write you an address that will always find me. And when you write I will answer you.”

He took a bit of paper and scribbled an address. Aaron folded it and put it into his waistcoat pocket. It was an Italian address.

“But how can I live in Italy?” he said. “You can shift about. I’m tied to a job.”

“You—with your budding rod, your flute—and your charm—you can always do as you like.”

“My what?”

“Your flute and your charm.”

“What charm?”

“Just your own. Don’t pretend you don’t know you’ve got it. I don’t really like charm myself; too much of a trick about it. But whether or not, you’ve got it.”

“It’s news to me.”

“Not it.”

“Fact, it is.”

“Ha! Somebody will always take a fancy to you. And you can live on that, as well as on anything else.”

“Why do you always speak so despisingly?”

“Why shouldn’t I?”

“Have you any right to despise another man?”

“When did it go by rights?”

“No, not with you.”

“You answer me like a woman, Aaron.”

Again there was a space of silence. And again it was Aaron who at last broke it.

“We’re in different positions, you and me,” he said.

“How?”

“You can live by your writing—but I’ve got to have a job.”

“At the same time,” he remarked after a pause, during which he had sat puffing at his long pipe and gazing down into the fire, “you can hardly be open to a charge of sensationalism, for out of these cases which you have been so kind as to interest yourself in, a fair proportion do not treat of crime, in its legal sense, at all. The small matter in which I endeavoured to help the King of Bohemia, the singular experience of Miss Mary Sutherland, the problem connected with the man with the twisted lip, and the incident of the noble bachelor, were all matters which are outside the pale of the law. But in avoiding the sensational, I fear that you may have bordered on the trivial.”

“The end may have been so,” I answered, “but the methods I hold to have been novel and of interest.”

“Pshaw, my dear fellow, what do the public, the great unobservant public, who could hardly tell a weaver by his tooth or a compositor by his left thumb, care about the finer shades of analysis and deduction! But, indeed, if you are trivial. I cannot blame you, for the days of the great cases are past. Man, or at least criminal man, has lost all enterprise and originality. As to my own little practice, it seems to be degenerating into an agency for recovering lost lead pencils and giving advice to young ladies from boarding-schools. I think that I have touched bottom at last, however. This note I had this morning marks my zero-point, I fancy. Read it!” He tossed a crumpled letter across to me.

It was dated from Montague Place upon the preceding evening, and ran thus:

DEAR MR. HOLMES:

I am very anxious to consult you as to whether I should or should not accept a situation which has been offered to me as governess. I shall call at half-past ten to-morrow if I do not inconvenience you.

Yours faithfully,

VIOLET HUNTER.

“Do you know the young lady?” I asked.

“Not I.”

“It is half-past ten now.”

“Yes, and I have no doubt that is her ring.”

“It may turn out to be of more interest than you think. You remember that the affair of the blue carbuncle, which appeared to be a mere whim at first, developed into a serious investigation. It may be so in this case, also.”

“Well, let us hope so. But our doubts will very soon be solved, for here, unless I am much mistaken, is the person in question.”

As he spoke the door opened and a young lady entered the room. She was plainly but neatly dressed, with a bright, quick face, freckled like a plover’s egg, and with the brisk manner of a woman who has had her own way to make in the world.

“You will excuse my troubling you, I am sure,” said she, as my companion rose to greet her, “but I have had a very strange experience, and as I have no parents or relations of any sort from whom I could ask advice, I thought that perhaps you would be kind enough to tell me what I should do.”

“Pray take a seat, Miss Hunter. I shall be happy to do anything that I can to serve you.”