1.   But should the ghosts of Thurber and Smith meet and spend an hour in idle banter, Thurber might buy Smith an admiring drink.

2.   He is as likely to engage in idle banter or to let others dominate a conversation as to steer it where he wants it to go.

3.   On the night before the Iowa caucuses in late January, he distracted Bush with fine cigars and idle banter.

4.   The compound is a sober professional enterprise, without a whiff of aristocratic gentility, and with little idle banter.

5.   Unlike most teen-agers, she has little use for idle banter.