Ricketts continued his task of laboriously counting the contents of a carton of pencils.... "I keep a very tight eye indeed on my ladies' and gentlemen's requisites. There's paper and there's pencils and then there's steel pens -- though that's not a difficulty since I'm the only one who uses them now. We had a bit of a to-do a long time back about biros. The last editor didn't hold with them. Said it was an affront to decency to have them in the building. Fountain pens or steel pens only, he decreed. Or pencils, of course. But then, sir, you know how it is. It's called progress, I suppose. We had to give in in the end, just like with those machines the typewriting ladies use."