"Yeah, cleaning is stupid, but sometimes you have to do it." Elisa nodded her head and frowned. "I totally make daddy do all the cleaning around the room. Emma does some of it too." She nodded her head.
Emma scoffed. "I do not. Shut up, Elisa." She made a face and then looked at Maddie. They were at that age where they listened to basically everything they thought their peers wanted them to say. Maddie was a peer, even though she was slightly older. "Nieces are annoying," she said with an annoyed face.
Toby leaned against a nearby wall and listened to the conversation, and really, he was less aware of how creepy it must have made him look, more aware of the fact that he was watching his girls interact with someone he wasn't familiar with. He knew that Maddie wasn't really as troublesome as people thought she was, but she still had some troublesome tendencies. The last thing he needed was for the girls to be more trouble than they were.
"Who was there?" Elisa asked. "A lot of people?"
Emma looked at Maddie expectantly when Elisa asked her question, then added, "Next time we'll totally have to come with. Will you each us to play? Since we've never played before?" Her eyes flashed with hope and her smile widened, as if to plead with the older girl.
Toby finally decided to make his presence known, with a soft chuckle. "I think you have a fan club," he pointed out to the girl. "They'll definitely want to come along next time you play. And they can definitely let Kori know that they won't be there, instead of just ditching," he said, more to the girls than to Maddie. "I bet they'll be pretty big assets to whatever team they play on. Unless you guys do every man for themselves, anyway," he added with a gentle smile.