50840 You did not tell me that you intended to go into harness.'
50841 'Then, how do you know?'
50842 'I see it, I deduce it.
50843 How do I know that you have been getting yourself very wet lately, and that you have a most clumsy and careless servant girl?'
50844 'My dear Holmes,' said I, 'this is too much.
50845 You would certainly have been burned had you lived a few centuries ago.
50846 It is true that I had a country walk on Thursday and came home in a dreadful mess; but, as I have changed my clothes, I can't imagine how you deduce it.
50847 As to Mary Jane, she is incorrigible, and my wife has given her notice; but there again I fail to see how you work it out.'
50848 He chuckled to himself and rubbed his long nervous hands together.
50849 'It is simplicity itself,' said he; 'my eyes tell me that on the inside of your left shoe, just where the firelight strikes it, the leather is scored by six almost parallel cuts.
50850 Obviously they have been caused by some one who has very carelessly scraped round the edges of the sole in order to remove crusted mud from it.
50851 Hence, you see, my double deduction that you had been out in vile weather, and that you had a particularly malignant boot-slitting specimen of the London slavey.
50852 As to your practice, if a gentleman walks into my rooms smelling of iodoform, with a black mark of nitrate of silver upon his right forefinger, and a bulge on the side of his top hat to show where he has secreted his stethoscope, I must be dull indeed if I do not pronounce him to be an active member of the medical profession.'