Nita drank her tea, watching Roshaun read while he maneuvered the lollipop stick from one side of his mouth to the other. It was like catching some coolly elegant anime character relaxing between shots, because the bulge it produced in the Wellakhit's face looked very out of place against that otherwise flawless facial structure, the emerald green eyes and the too-perfect blond hair. Roshaun felt Nita's gaze resting on him, and looked up. "What?" It was exactly what Dairine would have said. Nita controlled her smile. "The lollipop …" "What about it?" "I hate to say this, but you're kind of spoiling your grandeur." "What grandeur he has," Dairine remarked. "Kings are made no less noble by eating," Roshaun said. "Rather, they ennoble what they eat." "Wow, who sold you that one?" Nita said. She grinned. At the same moment, her stomach growled, and she made up her mind about breakfast. "I think I'll go ennoble a couple of waffles." Roshaun ignored her and continued to work on the lollipop, while Nita went back into the kitchen and headed for the freezer. "And you're going to get cavities," Dairine said. As Nita turned around with the frozen-waffle box, she saw Roshaun deliberately arch one eyebrow. "How can a biped come down with a geological feature?" "It's hwatba-t," Dairine said, turning a page in the weekend section. "Not emiwai." "Oh," Roshaun said. "Well, it's all right: People from my planet don't get those." "I don't care if you come from Dental Hygiene World," Nita said as she put the waffles in the toaster and started it up, "you'll get them all right if you start stuffing that much sugar in your face every day." Roshaun merely chewed briefly, and then reached out to the canister in the middle of the table for another lollipop. Nita winced. "Oh, Roshaun, don't chew them up like that. It hurts just listening to you!" "You sound like Sker'ret," Dairine said, turning another page. "Sker'ret is if nothing else enthusiastic and robust in his approach to the things he enjoys," Roshaun said, "so I'll take that as a compliment." He got up and wandered out the back door.