[…] there was instantly a dreadful confusion and uproar in the room, and such a grabbling and laughing; he could not catch the words […]

serious girls with their hair in snoods entered numbers into logbooks […]

Once it's cooked, it's not enough of a hard chew to count.

Generator excitation is obtained by a combination of the separately-excited and self-excited fields, and the output is controlled by a resistance in the separate field circuit adjusted by the load regulator under the control of the engine governor.