Book One: Chapters 2 - 3, The Sorcerer's Apprentice and Mistress of the Hounds Summary

Whatever fates put Mary and Holmes together, the pair quickly becomes inseparable. Mary is the apprentice that Holmes always yearned for, and he is the instructor/father figure and intellectual inspiration that her quick mind so needed after the death of her parents. Mrs. Hudson teaches her to garden, sew, cook and even instructs her in the ways of a female body. On Mary's eighteenth birthday, Mrs. Hudson takes Mary to a dressmaker's and then to a hairdresser, after which her appearance makes Holmes notice for the first time that she is indeed another gender rather than just "Russell." Mary is of the opinion that Watson is at the least dim-witted until the day she arrives unannounced to find him in...