"Oh, daddy," he cried, "I did not know that you were due yet. I should have been here to meet you. Oh, I am so glad to see you!"
Ferguson gently disengaged himself from the embrace with some little show of embarrassment.
"Dear old chap," said he, patting the flaxen head with a very tender hand. "I came early because my friends, Mr. Holmes and Dr. Watson, have been persuaded to come down and spend an evening with us."
"Is that Mr. Holmes, the detective?"
"Yes."
The youth looked at us with a very penetrating and, as it seemed to me, unfriendly gaze.
"What about your other child, Mr. Ferguson?" asked Holmes. "Might we make the acquaintance of the baby?"
"Ask Mrs. Mason to bring baby down," said Ferguson. The boy went off with a curious, shambling gait which told my surgical eyes that h
