Tietjens said:
"Damn it. It's a serious matter. It's driving me out of the unspeakable office I'm in."
Macmaster said:
"No! No! You're wrong. It's a wrong view you take." And with a good deal of real passion he began to explain to the General. It was an affair that had already given him a great deal of pain. The Government had asked the statistical department for figures illuminating a number of schedules that they desired to use in presenting their new Bill to the Commons. Mr. Waterhouse was to present it.
Mr. Waterhouse at the moment was slapping Mr. Sandbach on the back, tossing the hair out of his eyes and laughing like a hysterical schoolgirl. He looked suddenly tired. A police constable, his buttons shining, appeared, drinking from a pewter-pot outside the glazed door. The two city men ran across the angle from the dressing-room to the same door, buttoning their clothes. The Minister said loudly:
"Make it guineas!"
It seemed to Macmaster painfully wrong that Tietjens should call anyone so genial and unaffected an unspeakable swine. It was unjust. He went on with his explanation to the General.
The Government had wanted a set of figures based on a calculation called B 7. Tietjens, who had been working on one called H 19—for his own instruction—had persuaded himself that H 19 was the lowest figure that was actuarially sound.
The General said pleasantly: "All this is Greek to me."
"Oh no, it needn't be," Macmaster heard himself say. "It amounts to this. Chrissie was asked by the Government—by Sir Reginald Ingleby—to work out what 3 x 3 comes to: it was that sort of thing in principle. He said that the only figure that would not ruin the country was nine times nine. . . ."