James is indeed entirely willing to assume that Francis' current mood is just a bout of understandable emotional upset, but he does wish he knew what exactly had prompted it, both to avoid it in the future and to give him a little more insight into what Francis is feeling. He's well aware that although only moments had passed between the time James had last seen Francis back on King William Island and the time he'd awoken here, the opposite is not true. There's so much there that he isn't aware of.

But he tries to put that out of his mind for the moment and just give Francis a little time to sort through whatever's going on. Besides, although James is quite a bit more mentally sharp once again after having a little time to recover, he definitely still needs to devote some concentration to figuring out what Raju is talking about.

"Strange things in what sense? How would it be not worth the trouble?" The vagueness seems purposeful, and presumably that's because this is either something complicated to explain or something difficult to talk about. Either way, it feels important to know.