With his hands busy, he found the courage to talk to her a little.

He made Marian laugh out loud and it was the first time he had ever heard her do that.
Marian disclosed a sense of humor, and even teased Bud a little about Honey.

But her teasing lacked that edge of bitterness which Bud had half expected in retaliation for Honey's little air of superiority.
"Your precision in cutting cakes is very much like your accurate fingering of the piano," she observed irrelevantly, surveying his work with her lips pursed.

"A pair of calipers would prove every piece exactly, the same width; and even when you play a Meditation?
I'm sure the metronome would waggle in perfect unison with your tempo.

I wonder--" She glanced up at him speculatively.