their hands mark out the time

"I know you like to beg favors, Mash - what goes around comes around, with you. That much I know. You're a good egg, but..."

"But?" Masha ventures, temporarily displaced from her usual volubility. All her jokes about Uncle Guerny (she'd run the family friend connection to its maximal conclusion with immediacy, once she'd gotten to the age where she could get away with it) take a bit of a backseat when she's actually conferring with him.

Guernica fixes her with a long look. "Don't get too far away from our heart. We don't want Cassini being called the rotten egg."