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Sherry! It’s been years! Oh, it’s so WONDERFUL to see you! You haven’t changed a whit!”
    With an obvious effort, for the young woman seemed determined to hug him as tightly as possible, Holmes held her at arm’s length and stared at her in astonishment. Watson gaped at the scene; not only was the young woman uncommonly lovely, he had never before seen Holmes in such a predicament.
    “Leigh?!” Holmes queried, patently shocked. “Is that you?”
    “She’s grown a wee bit, hasn’t she, Holmes?” Whitesell noted proudly. “My little girl is quite the woman now. Dr. Watson, permit me to introduce my daughter, Leighton Quintana Whitesell. Leighton, this is Dr. John Watson.”
    A beaming Leighton finally moved back from Holmes as Watson stepped forward, taking her hand and bowing briefly over it. “Charmed,” he murmured, trying not to get lost in the vivid green gaze.
    “Good evening, Doctor, very pleased to meet you,” Leighton said with a welcoming smile, then turned back to Holmes, catching his hand and pulling him—unwillingly—behind. Watson was put in mind of a tugboat manoeuvring an ocean liner. “Sherry, you can’t imagine how excited I’ve been over seeing you again! You’ve already met Landers. Come along and meet the others! You too, Doctor! Are you really Sherry’s bosom friend? Da says you are.”
    “We are dear friends, yes, sometimes in despite of appearances,” Watson averred, then cocked an eyebrow at Holmes, who was evidently—as Watson adjudged by his expression —trying not to show his vexation over the situation in front of Professor Whitesell. “’Sherry’? Holmes, what—”
    “Oh, that would be her childhood name for Holmes,” Whitesell explained, as Leighton towed a red-faced Holmes before them. “She wasn’t able to quite manage wrapping her little mouth around the name ‘Sherlock,’ and so that is how it ended up coming out—with a few intermediate attempts, I suppose, since she had a bit of a lisp, early on. You see, there is some ten or twelve years’ difference in their ages, give or take, and she was quite a child when Holmes and I first met, which was actually a couple of years before he began his post-graduate work—she is still some few years from her majority yet, though I might have presented her as an early debutante last season, had either of us wished. But Holmes was at my home a good bit at the time, as you might imagine of a protégé student, and Leighton fairly doted on him. My wife Dulce—Dulce Lucrece Quintana, she was; I met her at a natural philosophy conference at La Universidad de Zaragoza, and we fell head over heels in love—her mother Dulce died, oh, perhaps two years before Holmes became my pupil, and I was busier than I should have been, with a daughter that age; buried my heartbreak in my work, as it were. I was a bad father for a few years, Doctor, though I hate like hell to admit to it, but there it is. Young Leighton was starved for affection, I fear. And while you may not know it, let alone credit it, young Holmes there has quite a way with the children, as it turns out.”
    “I have seen a little, yes, so I am not totally surprised. At home, he has a positive brigade of street urchins he has marshalled to his cause. You would be amazed at the information they seem able to turn up for him, usually in mere hours.”
    “I don’t doubt a bit of it. I shudder to think of the effect he could have had as the Pied Piper of Hamelin. Not that I can picture him in such a… colourful… wardrobe, mind. But,” Whitesell dropped back at the same time as he lowered his voice, nodding at the pair in front of them, “I think Holmes had not exactly considered the passage of time, do you think?”
    “Oh, quite,” Watson agreed, grinning beneath his moustache as he watched the H.M.S Sherlock Holmes being towed to its berth by the tiny tug Leighton . “This should prove an interesting evening. Your daughter is… very