"The devil is in it!" I exclaimed rudely and with exasperation. "I'll do anything to please you, who have proved yourself so true and so generous a friend. But surely I'm entitled to a reason. I admit frankly that I'm less keen on this work than I was before I heard the Dumpling's passionate plea for the poor--a plea which seemed to me a sort of conscription, calling upon and compelling every able-bodied man to enlist himself and to take up arms in so sacred a cause. I don't say that I mightn't see my way, sooner or later, perhaps even at once, to give up the detective business, if giving it up means pleasing you and winning your niece--who, by the bye, has just done me the honour to declare that she hates me, so there seems small enough occasion to consider that aspect of the case. But when a man has devoted years of his life to any particular career, and has even made some small success at it, you can hardly expect him to throw up everything at a moment's notice, and without any sort of reason being given for the request. What is your reason? What is your niece's reason? For some reason the two of you must surely have." "It isn't respectable, for one thing," replied Aunt Clara doggedly. "Respectable!" I said. "Is that it? Frankly, I have always felt that there isn't very much difference, after all, between the man who uses his brains to track down and to capture a criminal--as a detective does--and the man who uses his brains to make out a case against the criminal and get him convicted--as the barrister does--and the man who, after he has listened to all that can be said about the case by everybody concerned, sums it up, and, when a verdict has been returned, passes sentence. They are all three--judge, barrister, and detective--officers of the law and servants of the King and of the public; and I'm not sure that the detective's isn't the most important and useful work of the three. Anyhow, it is the most difficult." "Bosh!" said Miss Clara shortly. "You'll be telling me next that you might just as well be a hangman, for _he's_ as much an officer of the law and a servant of the King and of the public as the other three; and so, according to your showing, equally respectable. Bosh, Mr. Rissler! Bosh!" "All right. Bosh it is, then!" I replied amicably. "Anything for a quiet life, and I admit I hadn't thought of your holding trumps all the time, and playing the hangman card. Anyhow, I'm answered on that score. What a wonderful woman you are! Judge, barrister, and detective all rolled into one. A great lawyer was lost to the world when it was decided that you should come into it wearing petticoats instead of a wig and gown." "You're a fool!" said Miss Clara, not ill-pleased, in spite of the uncompromising plainness of her language.