Pauline's smile never slipped, and not even once did she give in to the curious furrow of her brow that wanted to quirk just so as Jack Pumphrey spoke. Instead, she deliberately practiced the virtue of patience - one that her quick-thinking mind most lacked - and simply waited the space of a heartbeat while she listened. A hearbeat, a second or two, just long enough to string together the unfamiliar phrases and inflections, the mixtures of words familiar and, as spoken by Jack, utterly and completely foreign. 

For Pauline, indulging in that heartbeat, it became something of a game really, piecing this strangely delightful translation together in her thoughts. Besides, Mr. Pumphrey did not seem to be in any particular hurry - quite the opposite actually. So why should she be in such a rush?

"Newfoundland?" The young woman let her arms fall before her, the tablet held in the fingers of both hands as she tried her very best to dredge up the Geography 101 compulsory course she'd been forced to take. When it came to numbers, equations and the physics of matter and motion, Pauline was in her natural element. But in truth, the nuances of the long march of humanity through time and space had never been her strong suit. 

She chewed her lip softly for another moment before her face suddenly lit with joy. "Canada! Oh, you're Canadian then?" Pauline was inordinately proud of her recollection, and beamed happily. All her life, and living in Wyoming after all, she had yet to meet a Canadian quite like Jack Pumphrey - but there was always room in her world for the new or strange or wondrous. 

Pauline fought the urge to play with the crucifix on her necklace that Jack pointed out, her smile thanking him for the pretty compliment before he moved right on into his own namesake. Saint John? Few people outside the Catholic church referred to the apostle or the prophet as such, and she wondered if, perhaps, Mr. Pumphrey might be among her co-religionists. But since he did not elaborate, she could only guess he might not wish to go on in that vein. Lapsed Catholics were not exactly uncommon when the Earth was whole and healthy. Here aboard the [i]Copernicus[/i], a mere speck of humanity in the vast, cold darkness of space? Well, if the malaise of the Second Shift was anything to go by, faith and hope in the ultimate goodness of the Divine was not exactly overflowing and abundant.

"And for whatever it's worth, you can just keep... Talking... Talking the cat off the fish truck? That would be perfectly fine with me because yes, 'Saint Jack,'" she teased with a wide smile of her own. "Born and bred in Wyoming, and lived there all my life. My father worked at the Mountain and, I'm afraid, there's nothing else terribly interesting to be said about me." And in that moment, Pauline's words were as sincere as they could be. 

She turned her head just so then, catching sight of the silver winking at Jack's own throat. No, not a crucifix surely, but something else entirely that caught the reflection of the florescent lights above. "What is that, if I may ask, that you have on your chain? Is it something from Newfoundland, or is it entirely special to Petty Cove Harbor?"