Mouth opens, breath draws in - she continues, races past - mouth snaps closed, hand raises, pointer finger held up toward the ceiling as a professor about to lecture - she continues, what's my childhood nickname? - his hand wavers, aborts, reappears, eyes beginning to flit from clock to girl, from precise, clever time management to precise, clever body management.

Well. An exaggeration, that.

That's a rude way to talk about your mother.

"I've no debt simply because I've no connections; an intellectual tramp, a snob might say, despite looking remarkably terrible with a beard. Favorite color? Blue, set not too dark nor too light. Never did fancy turtles. I once ate nothing but celery for three days, a habit broken only because my daughter convinced me my feet would turn purple."

The earlier, more flustered expressions began and ended in silence.

Rattled quick as a can sent spinning down a street-- but, really, it didn't say much about him at all that he rose to the challenge of a biting girl, eyes at last focusing front and center, attention piqued in a keen, if not fragile, way. Not quite question-for-question, titling only one question, and had the mention of a daughter been an intentional retort (otherwise unexpressed) to the preying implication?

With the way he didn't seem to remember his words once they were out of his mouth, no. It couldn't have been.

"That is to say: I'm excessively stubborn, much like you, and I think drift would be positively awful, though not as awful as going it alone, which is... half like you."

-- Except, there, he grasped what he spoke, what should have been a barb turned only-a-teensy-tinsy-bit-questioning statement.