Stella returned his greeting in an absentminded way, clearly thinking of something else.

He told me not to fret, and patted my hand in that absentminded way he does when he wants to get to work.

Only now did the admiral get around to greeting Luon, in a pleasantly absentminded way.

In an apparently absentminded way, Massey handed what looked like the same menu card back to the woman in the lilac dress.

He was fingering the golden flecks in the wall in an absentminded way, as if trying to pry some of them loose.

He glanced up, and smiled in an absentminded way.

It was disconcerting, watching the absentminded way the grolls clubbed them to death.

Downstairs, Lowry could hear Mary singing in an absentminded way, going no more than half a chorus to a song he could not quite recognize.

"Maybe she didn't tell us everything," Garth suggested, stroking my thigh in an absentminded way.

She replaced it in an absentminded way with the grey Persian.