would send him stark, staring mad. Ah! it was a bad day that
ever he took a glass in his hand again. First he dropped me,
then he quarrelled with Sarah, and now that Mary has stopped
writing we don't know how things are going with them."

It was evident that Miss Cushing had come upon a subject on which
she felt very deeply. Like most people who lead a lonely life,
she was shy at first, but ended by becoming extremely
communicative. She told us many details about her brother-in-law
the steward, and then wandering off on the subject of her former
lodgers, the medical students, she gave us a long account of
their delinquencies, with their names and those of their
hospitals. Holmes listened attentively to everything, throwing
in a question from time to time.

"About your second sister, Sarah," said he. "I wonder, since you
are both maiden ladies, that you do not keep house together."

"Ah! you don't know Sarah's temper or you would wonder no more.
I tried it when I came to Croydon, and we kept on until about two
months ago, when we had to part. I don't want to say a word
against my own sister, but she was always meddlesome and hard to
please, was Sarah."

"You say that she quarrelled with your Liverpool relations."

"Yes, and they were the best of friends at one time. Why, she
went up there to live in order to be near them. And now she has
no word hard enough for Jim Browner. The last six months that
she was here she would speak of nothing but his drinking and his