Randolph Holstershire the Third arrived in a coach precisely on time. He stepped out and tipped the driver ten percent to the penny- an amount which he had calculated using the abacus he was so rarely parted from. The abacus had been given to him as a gift by a Chinaman he had kept in his employ whilst he was on sabbatical in the Eastern Lands. Randolph couldn’t recall the name of his servant, but he did recall how best to use the abacus- for tipping. He also recalled a torrid night in Afghanistan, just he and his servant, naked and clinging to each other to create enough body heat to survive a mountain storm. It was that night he’d learned the secrets of the abacus, and more he would rarely say. Calculating a square root by hand takes dextrous fingers and delicate instruction to say the least, but thoughts of this kind were not relevant to his visit to Petticoat Manor.