'It always is' he said in an almost mutter. An aid placed a quill at his elbow and Samuel dipped it into the ink pot and made a few jotting notes of his own on the dossier. 'And here I was thinking it was we Americans who marked everything by virtue of equal tallys.' he said with a broad but rather forced smile, that was more of an uncomfortable grimmace.

The other man was very English, painfully so, like a character from one of those tepid novels by Dickens - the boring one, the Pickwick Papers. Samuel made another few quick notes on his paper - 'It may be a matter of quotas Mister Crouch, but I'm not entirely sure what more you could possibly expect us to give up.'. He met Mister Crouches gaze with a steady implacable expression.