Tobin asked the question in the Roll-room, in the afternoon, with the shutters half closed and the back leaves of the Roll turned up on the lectern under the lamp.
He had been carrying it since the carter’s line was read. He had carried it up the Undercroft steps and down again, and past the Kitchen door where Pell was singing off-key over the bread, and into the Great Hall for the sitting, where he had read twenty names in his clear high voice and then sat on the lectern step with his feet not touching the floor and waited. Now he was in the Roll-room with Tallow, and the Ink was in its jar, and the question had got too big to keep in his mouth.
“Tallow,” he said. “Am I counted?”
Tallow did not look up at once. He was writing in the minute-book, slowly, in the grey Ink that had gone thin in the jar, and he finished the line before he answered. Tobin had noticed that Tallow always finished the line first. He thought it was the most careful habit he had ever seen, and the most annoying, because it always meant you had to wait.
