There was no innuendo in her voice, but her breathless whimsies caused her great chest to heave, and Neil couldn't stop staring for a good, long moment. Like a trance he had to pull himself out of it with a will. "Yeah there's a lot of heavy iron there." He said, and his love of all things mechanical began to override his thought process. "But you'll need to visit in the summer time. That's when we practice and use our ordinance. You haven't lived until you've shot a sixteen pounder into a three foot thick wall." He said, as wide eyed as she was. "The ball just splatters into a thousand thousand pieces after two feet in. But-" He leaned in to speak to her, placing his arms just on the wooden rim beside her. "What's even more impressive is, we've discovered a way certain layering of wood can cause cannon balls to bounce off harmlessly, so what we're trying to do is to reshape the balls with a certai-" 

Otto cleared his throat, and the two of them turned to see him staring daggers at both. At Neil for the most part, of course, but Emmaline for indulging in the 'nonsense.' "You're polite to humor him, my lady. But this vagabond has been given his station at the Gunnery School out of the good will of our Master Gunter. He's a lowlife scum that has never known any of the finer things in life. He is not like you or I," He declared, placing the horsewhip on Neil and pushing him back suddenly and unexpectedly, sending him into the back of the wagon. He nearly hit his head, but he caught himself. 

"[sub]Big words for someone whose mine I could fail[/sub]." Neil muttered, but the Graf did not hear him. He was a bit too busy turning back to keep control of the horses, who began to whinny and stamp their feet as the path grew more rocky, the trees dispersing and growing less crowded around them. The chirps of the birds and scuttling of the squirrels had noticeably disappeared, but Neil chalked it up to the thinning of the woodlands. 

"Here we are, my dear. Just up the road here. I've been around here before you know, when I was with my father hunting quail. Before I joined the Metallurgists Society. It was just over there I nabbed the biggest one out of my hunting party. How it squirmed." He reminisced, fanciful memories of days long past ignored by Neil and likely Emmaline, as the mine shaft up ahead looked ominous enough to grab their attention.