Ford surveyed the ceiling glumly at Tycho's description of the event. It didn't sound particularly appealing for someone without any spare money to spend. He did understand horse races as a concept, he just didn't see the appeal. Maybe if he had extra galleons to part with at will, or if he cared about horses beyond the very basics of being able to ride one around the park, or if he'd had any tendencies towards athleticism. None of those things were true, though, so it seemed there wouldn't be much to hold his interest — or, more to the point, there wouldn't be much to distract him from the possibility that Macnair was sitting a few feet away just trying to find the right words to finally call things off.

He perked up at the suggestion that Tycho ought to take him somewhere — not just metaphorically, but physically: he had been laying back on one of the sofas and now climbed into a sitting position so that he could peer over the top of the furniture at Tycho, with one eyebrow raised. "If you can't go, you could hardly take me, could you?" he pointed out. Not that he was particularly dying to go to yet another ballroom dance, whether it had interesting artwork or not, but now that his friend that brought up the prospect he was curious if he'd had anything else in mind.

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