Alfred, being a sailor and used to hearing people talk the way sailors did, interpreted the phrase a capital-S Situation as a polite euphemism for saying a shit situation, which surprised him. Polite euphemism or no, it didn't seem like the sort of thing that would come out of the mouth of someone who was, at least as far as Alfred knew, mostly proper. He glanced at her curiously, his head tilting just a slight amount as he wondered whether he'd interpreted that correctly.

His mild surprise didn't leave him much of an opportunity to watch where he was going, unfortunately. Which shouldn't have been a problem, since they were walking along at such a leisurely pace it really might better have been described as meandering. Despite that, however, it seemed he was either forgetting how to walk, or was about to trip over his own feet, because just at the moment when he looked over at her Alfred stumbled. He put a hand out instinctively towards the nearest shop wall to keep himself from falling flat on his face, and dropped the book he'd bought Evander onto the nearby sidewalk. How embarrassing!

Without even bothering to see what he'd tripped on (because, with his luck and his general social awkwardness, it really might have just been his own feet), he reached down to retrieve the book. He was able to pick it up, but his feet weren't cooperating the way he wanted them to, which was his first sign that something was certainly Amiss.

"Uhm, I don't—" Alfred began, still vaguely under the impression that whatever was going on with his feet was his fault and inclined not to bring it up if he could avoid doing so. He was too distracted by the situation to talk about Evander, though, so the attempt was rather short lived. "We're not really—are your feet stuck, too?"