Mackenzie was looking at his watch.
"You took two minutes and eleven seconds," he said. "I'll take it for granted it's a sonnet . . . I have not read it because I can't turn it into Latin here . . . I haven't got your knack of doing eleven things at once. . . ."
A man with a worried face, encumbered by a bundle and a small book, was studying figures at Mackenzie's elbow. He interrupted Mackenzie in a high American voice to say that he had never drawn fourteen dollars seventy-five cents in Thrasna Barracks, Aldershot.
Mackenzie said to Tietjens:
"You understand. I have not read your sonnet. I shall turn it into Latin in the mess: in the time stipulated. I don't want you to think I've read it and taken time to think about it."
The man beside him said:
"When I went to the Canadian Agent, Strand, London, his office was shut up . . ."
Mackenzie said with white fury:
"How much service have you got? Don't you know better than to interrupt an officer when he is talking. You must settle your own figures with your own confounded Colonial paymaster. I've sixteen dollars thirty cents here for you. Will you take them or leave them?"
Tietjens said: