He pointed to the thick silver and ruby jewelled ring that sat on the Professor's forefinger. The Professor glanced at it, momentarily distracted, his frown not wavering. "Is it a cliff face," he responded mildly. "If that is all the attention that I have from you this morning, then I suppose we had better move on to more serious matters of study. Let us see if that can reawaken that degree of… attentiveness, that you had there for a few moments."
Oliver naturally would not have described it as attentiveness, and more as a jokingness, but he did not dare tell the Professor that, when he was captured by his own ideas. Naturally, though, the more serious the study became, and the more they delved into the older problem that Oliver was so familiar with, his own jokingness faded, and he quickly found himself relying on the old manners of calculation that he'd used in the past.
