Macmaster said: "We could call about two-thirty. That will be all right in the country. We stay till four with a cab outside. We can be on the first tee at five. If we like the course we'll stay next day: then Tuesday at Hythe and Wednesday at Sandwich. Or we could stay at Rye all your three days." "It will probably suit me better to keep moving," Tietjens said. "There are those British Columbia figures of yours. If we took a cab now I could finish them for you in an hour and twelve minutes. Then British North America can go to the printers. It's only 8.30 now." Macmaster said, with some concern: "Oh, but you _couldn't_. I can make our going all right with Sir Reginald," Tietjens said. "Oh, yes I can. Ingleby will be pleased if you tell him they're finished. I'll have them ready for you to give him when he comes at ten." Macmaster said: "What an extraordinary fellow you are, Chrissie. Almost a genius!" "Oh," Tietjens answered. "I was looking at your papers yesterday after you'd left and I've got most of the totals in my head. I was thinking about them before I went to sleep. I think you make a mistake in overestimating the pull of Klondyke this year on the population. The passes are open, but relatively no one is going through. I'll add a note to that effect." In the cab he said: "I'm sorry to bother you with my beastly affairs. But how will it affect you and the office?" "The office," Macmaster said, "not at all. It is supposed that Sylvia is nursing Mrs. Satterthwaite abroad. As for me, I wish . . . ."--he closed his small, strong teeth--"I wish you would drag the woman through the mud. By God I do! Why should she mangle you for the rest of your life? She's done enough!" Tietjens gazed out over the flap of the cab. That explained a question. Some days before, a young man, a friend of his wife's rather than of his own, had approached him in the club and had said that he hoped Mrs. Satterthwaite--his wife's mother--was better. He said now: "I see. Mrs. Satterthwaite has probably gone abroad to cover up Sylvia's retreat. She's a sensible woman, if a bitch." The hansom ran through nearly empty streets, it being very early for the public official quarters. The hoofs of the horse clattered precipitately. Tietjens preferred a hansom, horses being made for gentlefolk. He had known nothing of how his fellows had viewed his affairs. It was breaking up a great, numb inertia to enquire.