[mairdie]

I was still in grammar school when I started reading Holmes. Mother adored it and always encouraged it as good reading material for me. It’s stayed as one of my top books and I’d let a lot of my library go before I’d give up my Holmes shelf.

My favorite line, from The Three Garridebs after the suspect shot Watson and Watson says it’s a mere scratch: “”You are right,” he cried with an immense sigh of relief. “It is quite superficial.” His face set like flint as he glared at our prisoner, who was sitting up with a dazed face. “By the Lord, it is as well for you. If you had killed Watson, you would not have got out of this room alive.”

That’s my Holmes and Watson! And you’re right. They never put that on the screen the way I imagine it.

[Moltke]

While Holmes was certainly fond of the good Doctor (other than once chiding him for the indelicacy of getting married :) - I'd have to look up the exact story), Conan Doyle was not mincing words, in the same last book that you quote from, when he has Holmes, in only one of two first person narratives by Holmes himself, characterize Watson in that singularly detached and somewhat cynical manner of his in the following manner:

"Speaking of my old friend and biographer, I would take this opportunity to remark that if I burden myself with a companion in my various little inquiries it is not done out of sentiment or caprice, but it is that Watson has some remarkable characteristics of his own to which in his modesty he has given small attention amid his exaggerated estimates of my own performances. A confederate who foresees your conclusions and course of action is always dangerous, but one to whom each development comes as a perpetual surprise, and to whom the future is always a closed book, is indeed an ideal helpmate." - The Adventure of the Blanched Soldier

BOOM! That introductory part of the story (the introductions are always the best parts, IMO) will never cease to make me laugh out loud. Holmes in a nutshell.