It would be doing the girl a service, therefore, instead of an injury, if I allowed myself to be convinced by Sergeant Cuff's logic.

I professed myself convinced by it accordingly.
We went on to Cobb's Hole, seeing the footsteps on the sand, as long as the light lasted.
On reaching the cottage, the fisherman and his son proved to be out in the boat; and Limping Lucy, always weak and weary, was resting on her bed up-stairs.

Good Mrs.Yolland received us alone in her kitchen.

When she heard that Sergeant Cuff was a celebrated character in London, she clapped a bottle of Dutch gin and a couple of clean pipes on the table, and stared as if she could never see enough of him.
I sat quiet in a corner, waiting to hear how the Sergeant would find his way to the subject of Rosanna Spearman.

His usual roundabout manner of going to work proved, on this occasion, to be more roundabout than ever.
How he managed it is more than I could tell at the time, and more than I can tell now.