He was delighted at recovering his stick, confirmed that it had been
presented from Charing Cross Hospital, but upset Holmes by explaining he
had received it on the occasion of his marriage, which had been his
reason for leaving London; indeed, he said, he was not even a qualified
Doctor, simply Mr. Mortimer. Nonetheless, he called himself a "dabbler
in science", and immediately became greatly excited about the shape of
Homes's skull, which he confessed that he coveted (I noted this in the
light of circumstances to come), declaring that he had hardly expected
it to be so dolichocephalic or with such well-marked supra-orbital
development. He ran his finger alond Holmes's parietal fissure, and
commented that a cast of Holmes's skull would be an ornament to any
anthropological museum, until the original was available.
